Abstract

COUTINHO DE MELLO, Alexandre; CARNEIRO MACIEL, Silvana; VASCONCELOS DIAS, Camila Cristina  and  CABRAL DA SILVA, João Victor. Depressive symptoms and their impact on social representation of depression: a study with adolescents. Cienc. Psicol. [online]. 2021, vol.15, n.2, e2098.  Epub Dec 01, 2021. ISSN 1688-4094.  https://doi.org/10.22235/cp.v15i2.2098.

Depression has been portrayed as the evil of the century, becoming a public health problem that has affected millions of people worldwide. This study aimed to understand how adolescents represent depression. One hundred and sixty-eight high school students aged 14 to 18 years participated, from public and private schools in João Pessoa-Paraíba, Brazil. We used the Free Association of Words Technique (TALP), a sociodemographic questionnaire, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). The social representation of depression anchored in subjective experiences was observed, emphasizing the individual aspects of this phenomenon, such as sadness, loneliness, anguish, suffering and suicide. The adolescents presented depressive symptoms in 21.4 % of the cases, and these percentages are higher when compared to other studies in the area. It is hoped that this study can promote preventive actions in the school context and reflect on ways to raise awareness of depression as a disorder with multiple causes.

Keywords : depression; adolescents; social representation; TALP; HADS.

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