Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Predicting adolescent depression

Predicting who is likely to develop an illness allows doctors and other healthcare professionals to intervene and, with any luck, prevent the condition worsening. A team of researchers at the University of Chicago have developed a way of predicting which children will go on to develop depression after a year. They looked at risk factors at the start of the study (social and cognitive vulnerability and mood) using data from the 1995 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health then aimed to develop a risk prediction index using statistical techniques. The best model was made up of 20 items.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=news&id=114718&cn=5

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