Screening for Depression in Adolescence in a Primary Care Clinic

Abstract

Background: Primary care visits account for 70% of all adolescent visits each year, with nearly 75% of adolescents who completed suicide being seen by a medical professional within four months of doing so (Forman-Hoffman et al., 2016; Maslow, Dunlap, & Chung, 2015). Primary care providers can have a meaningful impact on this burden by increasing depression screening and increasing knowledge about depression. These two interventions can aid in closing the gap of adolescents not receiving timely and appropriate treatment for their mental health condition and early recognition of mental health conditions. Purpose: This project provided insight on the knowledge and practice behaviors of primary care providers regarding screening adolescents for depression in the primary care setting. This project aided in validation that teaching providers a clinical guideline increases provider knowledge and screening practices to better identify adolescents with depression. Methods: The design of this DNP project was a one-group pre- and post-test quantitative descriptive design. A chart review was done to assess provider behavior for screening for depression post educational intervention. These results were compared to a previous chart review that was done in December 2018. Participants were recruited from Rehobeth College Clinic in Gallup, New Mexico. Results: The overall results revealed that participant (n=3) knowledge increased after the evidence-based educational intervention with a mean score of 59.93% on the pretest and an average score of 77.77% on the posttest. The chart reviews showed a decline in providers screening for adolescent depression. More children were screened at preventative visits (86%) than at any other types of visits. Discussion: The results of this study provide evidence that pediatric primary care providers had a change in knowledge after evidence-based education was provided. However, it did not increase provider behavior in administering depression screening. The statistical significance of the changes could not be determined due to very small sample size.