Symptoms of depression among adolescents and young adults

The authors evaluated the depressive symptomatology of 26 adolescent and 27 young adult, hospitalized patients meeting Research Diagnostic Criteria for Major Depressive Disorder. Few differences were found between these two groups with regard to either symptoms or subtypes of depression. Overall, these data indicate that Major Depressive Disorder can be easily identified in younger samples using established criteria. We also report a particularly high percentage of endogenous subtype among our patients. The RDC endogenous subtype of depression among younger inpatients may be more frequent than generally realized.