Depression in Adolescents’: Need for Social and Emotional Skills in Managing Depression

Depression is a major factor in adolescent suicide, substance abuse, and a common cause of school failure and school dropout. Children and adolescents with major depressive disorders are at risk for suicidal behaviour, substance abuse, physical illness, early pregnancy, poor academic performance, impaired psychosocial functioning, and exposure to negative life events (Kovacs, 1996). The present study was conducted purposefully in two institutions, each from Haryana State and Delhi. Adolescents equally representing both the sexes i.e. 50 girls and 50 boys were selected on a random basis from both the institutions. Hence, a total of 200 adolescents constituted the sample for the study to assess the existing social and emotional skills. The adolescents were further assigned to experimental (50) and control (50) group. Life Skills Assessment Scale (LSAS) developed by Nair.et al. (2010) was used to assess the social and emotional skills among the adolescents. Beck et al. (1996) was used to estimate depression among adolescents. Majority of adolescents had moderate level of depression and negatively correlated with most of the social and emotional skill dimensions.