Southern Child and Adolescent Mental Health Semice at Flinders Medical Centre

Despite the inmasing interest in programs designed to improve the social ecology of schools, surprisingly little is known about whether differences between schools influence student mental health. This 3-year prospective, naturalistic study examines the school effect on adolescent depressive symptomatology (measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, CESD) among 2,489 students from 25 Australian high schools. Multilevel modelling techniques (HLM) formed the basis of the statistical analyses. There were statistically significant school effects on students ’ depressive symptomatology; however, these were much smaller than expected. Nearly all of the variation in CESD depression scores was found to be at the student level, indicating that the potential mental health gains from reducing risk factors in school social environments may be extremely limited and have little effect on student depressive symptomatology. dolescent depression is recognised as a major public A health problem in westemised nations. Large-scale studies have found prevalence rates of between 0.4 % and 8.3% for clinical depression (Bhaher et al.. 1996) and much higher rates (up to 50%) for adolescents reporting high levels of depressive symptomatology (Roberts, Andrews, Lewinsohn, & Hops, 1990). The burden of psychological distress associ