Depression Among Teenagers Who Are Homeless

¶ … Depressive Symptoms Among Homeless Adolescents

The research and subsequent data analysis aims at showing the relationship that there is between the factors that the interviewees will give and the depression rates among the homeless adolescents of below 20 years of age. The data that will be collected will be predominantly qualitative since this is a social science that seeks to understand the reason why the homeless adolescents get depressed and to find out whether the depression causes the homelessness/came before being homeless or if the depression set in after being homeless. The data analysis will seek to show the statistical correlation between the variables that will be recorded. The strength of the correlation will be derived from the similarity of answers on what caused their depression and the damage or effects that it caused in their life. The data analysis will look into central tendency trends like the mean, mode and the median to determine the correlation between variables in the research outcome.

Research question

For this research that will predominantly be conducted through literature review and interviews among 1000 participants, the question that defines the research is what are the key factors that contribute to the depressive symptoms experienced by the homeless adolescent population?

Conceptual definition

Depressive symptoms - at the conceptual definition of it, depressive symptoms are defined as a medical condition that an individual may have due to varying factors and also depends on the age of the patient. Issues like drug use, mental conditions, medical procedures, stage of life as well as life or social conditions can be contribution factor to the cause and rise of depression. The individual will hence feel sad, unimportant and unable to live his life in the normal way (MedicineNet, Inc., 2012).

Homeless adolescents- these are defined in the research as the people who have no place to call a permanent home or a physical address that they can comfortably go back to each day after running their errands. In the places that they temporarily live in, there are no family members and they don't consider them abodes fro a long projected future. They may live there because they are free spaces.

Operational definition

Depressive symptoms -- there are various things that can show that a teenager is suffering from depression. The teenagers tend to be irritable and are likely to have psychotic symptoms, they also hear and see things that are unreal. During the depression episode they might be more likely to complain of physical symptoms like aches and pains all over their bodies. Due to these conditions, the teenager may feel like they no longer want to live, they could cry frequently, have moments of extreme sadness and the develop the urge to harm oneself even to the point of suicide. Other signs are loss of interest in daily activities, sleep changes, loss of energy and reckless behavior.

Homeless adolescents -- for the purpose of this research, these are defined as females or males under the age of 20 years old who do not live together with their families but in the streets, drainages, with friends, in abandoned trucks or their own trucks, in hotels or unused basements and they may consider these as abodes for more than one month. These are the categories of people who will form the target population for the sample that will be used in the research.

Qualitative design

The research will be seeking to collect information, feelings and perspectives from the affected individuals over their depression and the causes of the same as the homeless teenagers. The interviews will also be seeking to establish whether the depression among the homeless teenagers was worse before they became homeless or whether it increased due to their being out of their traditional homes. The information will be collected mainly through interviews by the field assistants who will be charged with the duty and will have a brief training and induction to the research. They will also have an interview guide that will give them direction on the areas to touch on during the interview.

Sampling procedure

The sample size that will be sued within the logical scope f this research will be 100 respondents who will be randomly selected among the people who fit into the definition of the homeless teenagers in line with the conceptual definition above.