Passage 4

Questions I6 to 20 are based on the following passage.

Some estimates are that as many as 8% of adolescents suffer from depression at some time during any one year period, making it much more common than, for example, eating disorders, which seem to get more attention as a source of adolescent misery.

Even among psychiatrists and other mental health care professionals, the extent of the disability caused by depression is vastly underestimated. The World Health Organization has found that major depression is the single greatest cause of disability in the world more than twice as many people are disabled by depression as by the second leading cause of disability, iron-deficiency anemia (贫血症). Other diseases and disorders may get more press coverage or more research money, or more sympathy and concern from a well-meaning public, but major depression causes more long term human misery than any other single disease.

When I was a resident in psychiatry, we believed that true depression was rare among teenagers, or that insofar as it existed, it was just a normal phase of adolescent development with no lasting consequences. It didn't take long after I began treating troubled kids to see that this couldn't possibly be true. Research over recent decades has confirmed my impression. These beliefs, if any still holds them, are false and dangerous. In fact, early onset of depression is not normal, and can predict numerous unhappy life events for youngsters, including school failure, teenage pregnancy, and suicide attempts.