International Journal of Applied Philosophy

Volume 15, Issue 2, Fall 2001

Hacking the Blues
The Construction of the Depressed Adolescent

This paper employs Ian Hacking’s notion of interactive kinds to examine the recent construction of the kind, “depressed adolescent.” I examine first how adolescents themselves were constructed. I then trace how, in North America, we have moved in the past thirty-odd years from a situation of virtually no adolescent depression to the current situation where it is estimated that approximately one in four adolescents is depressed. I offer some reasons why we should be uncomfortable both with the exponential increases in this kind and with the way in which depressed adolescents are being treated at present. In conclusion, I tentatively suggest some ways of proceeding in the future.