Major Depression in Community Adolescents: age at Onset, Episode Duration, and Time to Recurrence

Diagnostic interviews were conducted with 1,508 randomly selected high school students. Three hundred sixty-two had experienced at least one past or current episode of major depressive disorder (MDD). Mean age at onset of first episode was 14.9 years. Early MDD was associated with female gender and suicidal ideation. MDD episode duration ranged from 2 to 250 weeks, with a mean of 26.4 weeks. Five percent relapsed within 6 months, 12% within 1 year, and 33% within 4 years.