Stumbling Into Adulthood: Learning From Depression While Growing Up

In the United States, approximately 16% of adults aged 18 to 24 years report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives. Growing attention to the specific impact of depression on people in their late teens and twenties corresponds with efforts in the behavioral and social sciences to more carefully delineate “emerging adulthood” either as a distinctive developmental phase, or simply as a protracted period between adolescence and adulthood created by contemporary social and economic conditions.

In this article, HIP Investigator Dr. Rachel Grob et al. examine how depression impacted respondents’ transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood, and built their capacity to form a coherent identity and find a purpose in life.