Treatment for adolescent major depression is most common in specialty mental health settings – and significantly on the rise – followed by educational and general medical settings, according to a new Rutgers University–Camden study.
Lu notes that, each year, around 40 percent of adolescents who received treatment for depression used services in multiple settings.
“These findings may reflect the progress the Affordable Care Act had made in expanding insurance coverage and providing mental health services in the past decade,” says the author, Wenhua Lu, an assistant professor of childhood studies at Rutgers University–Camden. “Continued efforts are needed to improve services for adolescents with major depression, especially in educational and general medical settings.”
Lu examines the national patterns, temporal trends, and factors related to service use across settings in her study, “Treatment for Adolescent Depression: National Patterns, Temporal Trends, and Factors Related to Service Use Across Settings,” published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
