The Article in Brief

10,962 young adults aged 16 to 29 years participated in and screened positive in an Internet-based depression assessment and questionnaire. More than one quarter (26 percent) of the respondents said they did not intend to accept their physician’s diagnosis of depression. The authors uncovered a number of reasons why these respondents refused the diagnosis of depression: they disagreed that medications are effective in treating depression, disagreed that depression has a biological cause, and agreed that they would be embarrassed if their friends knew that they had depression. Negative attitudes and beliefs, social norms, and past treatment experiences may contribute to low rates of depression treatment among young adults.