Hi Reddit, we are Karen Swartz, M.D., a psychiatrist and founder of the Adolescent Depression Awareness Program (ADAP) at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland and Holly Wilcox, PhD, a public health researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who led the randomized controlled trial to evaluate ADAP’s effectiveness in high schools. We are excited to discuss the importance of depression education and high school students and the potential to facilitate young people receiving treatment following our program. Depression is estimated to affect over 10% of teens in the United States. In addition to interrupting functioning socially, academically, and emotionally, untreated depression dramatically increases the risk of suicide in adolescents. Recognizing and treating depression is an effective strategy for preventing suicide among teenagers. Karen and colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins developed the Adolescent Depression Awareness Program (ADAP), a three-hour curriculum to educate high school students about depression typically taught in health classes. Holly led an independent assessment of the program’s effectiveness and designed the study. In our study, schools were randomly assigned to receive the program in either year one or year two so that the effectiveness of the program could be compared between these two groups. Over 6,000 students from 54 schools in five states participated. Our study demonstrated that there is a significant change in knowledge about depression following the program; this improvement in knowledge was sustained at a four month follow-up. Importantly, 46% of teachers reported that a student spoke to them about getting help for themselves her friend following the program. Our results were published in the December 2017 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. We are excited to be working together to bring depression education to more students across the country. In addition to our ongoing expansion of the high school program, we are working to develop a new depression education program for middle school programs. We look forward to answering your questions at 1pm ET Jan 8th