Teen depression increases risk for violence
The study examined the longitudinal association between depression and subsequent violence from three representative samples in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Finland. Researchers for these three cohorts used complementary measures of depression, including self-report and clinical diagnoses, and different measurements of violence including informant reports of violence and official convictions for violent crimes. The research team, led by Professor Seena Fazel, from the Forensic Psychiatry Group at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, found modest increases in risk of violence in depression. In absolute terms, for instance, in the Finnish sample, 7.1% of individuals with depression were convicted of one or more violent crimes, compared with 3.6% in the general population without depression . In relative terms, across samples and measurements, the study shows a consistent pattern of increased relative risk of later violence. In the Dutch and UK samples, an increase in d...