Investigating health correlates of adolescent depression in Canada

Background: The prevalence of depression rises sharply during adolescence.(1,2) Understanding health correlates of adolescent depression may provide descriptive information with regard to which adolescents are more likely to be depressed. Health determinants have been found to have associations with depression in adult populations, but have never been investigated concurrently with depression in a national sample of adolescents in Canada. Therefore, the aim of the present investigation was to understand which health determinants would be significantly associated with adolescent depression. Methods: A sample of 17,557 adolescents was used from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) 1.1 to determine the health correlates of adolescent depression among males and females. To understand the relationship between health determinants, logistic regressions were conducted. Results: The survey had an 84.7% response rate. The past 12-month prevalence of depression among the sample of adolescents was 6.5% +/- 0.4% (3.4% +/- 0.27% for males and 9.8% +/- 0.44% for females). Reporting fair/poor perceived health, smoking, alcohol dependence, food allergies, migraine headaches, chronic bronchitis, and having physical health conditions had positive associations with depression for males and females. However, gender differences in the relationship between health correlates and depression were found. Even after controlling for all variables, females were still more likely to be depressed. Conclusions: Several health determinants were associated with depression in adolescents in Canada. However, the relationship between some health determinants and depression functioned differently for males and females.