Abstract/Summary

Around 2.6% of adolescents are clinically depressed and around 1 in 4 adolescents experience substantial symptoms of depression at any given time (Polanczyk, Salum, Sugaya, Caye, & Rohde, 2015; Patalay & Gage, 2019). Timely access to treatment for adolescent depression is important in order to minimise the risks of harm, such as self-injury (Barrocas, Giletta, Hankin, Prinstein, & Abela, 2015) and suicide (Nrugham, Larsson, & Sund, 2008). However, the majority of children and adolescents with depression do not receive support from mental health services (Wu et al., 2001). This thesis explored the identification and treatment of adolescents experiencing symptoms of depression at school using quantitative and qualitative research methods. This thesis is comprised of three research papers which aimed to: a) investigate using one screening question, ‘would you like some help?’, to increase depressed secondary school students’ access to mental health services; b) explore adolescents’ experiences of values, which can inform their use in psychological therapies; and c) explore adolescents’ experiences of the helpful and unhelpful aspects of Brief Behavioural Activation for depression at school. The findings of the research presented in this thesis highlight the practicality of school as a setting for the identification and treatment of adolescents experiencing depression symptoms, in addition to providing evidence of the helpfulness and importance of adolescents’ values in the context of normal development and in the context of psychological therapy for depression.