Editorial: Psychotherapy for Adolescents With Major Depressive Disorder: More Is Not Necessarily Better

Depressive disorders are a problem for troubled teenagers, their families, and society at large that is hard to overestimate. In the US, as in many other countries, more than 1 in 3 teenagers report depressive symptoms above clinical cut-off levels, whereas 1 in 5 report having had at least 1 life-time episode of major depressive disorder (MDD).1 Depressive disorders are associated with many severe additional problems, such as the strongly increased risk of suicide, a cause of death that is on the rise among young people in the US.2 Treatment of adolescents with depression is at the core of child and adolescent mental health care, and it is essential for our services to be able to deliver treatments that are both effective and economically viable. Still, there are substantial limitations in our knowledge as to what kind of treatment is most effective, and as to potential moderators or biomarkers of different treatment outcomes. Of particularly high interest is to establish what treatments are associated with a lower relapse rate.