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Social support helps protects against depressed mood in adolescence

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Adolescence is a critical transition period, during which youth are at increased risk of experiencing high levels of sadness and/or depression.

Without effective interventions, depressed mood can worsen over time as youth transition into late adolescence and early adulthood. As such, there is a need to understand the different patterns of depressed mood and sadness seen in adolescents to help inform early intervention and prevention programs. It is also important the value of different sources of social support for boys and girls (such as family, school, friendships) in protecting against feelings of sadness and depressed mood.

This research utilised data from 4450 grade 6 students from public schools who participated in the Wellbeing and Engagement Collection (WEC) in 2014. These students were followed up in 2015, 2016 and 2017 to explore trajectories of depressed mood from grade 6 to 9.

This research was lead by Ms Danica Gregory for her Masters of Clinical Psychology thesis, and supervised by Dr Tess Gregory from the Fraser Mustard Centre and Professor Deborah Turnbull from the School of Psychology at the University of Adelaide.