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The violence and the deep environmental changes currently causing us adolescents feelings of anger, apathy and insecurity that are generators of depression risk.This reality calls for the urgent need to promote mental health and balance individual/social youths. In this context, the aim of this cross-sectional study, correlational and inferential statistics, is to assess the level of depression of young students from 12 to 18 years of the Autonomous Region of Madeira Island (RAM), Portugal. The sample is representative, composed by 1557 adolescents of both sexes, attending basic and secondary schools by municipality of RAM whose average age is 15.2 years. The measuring instrument selected was the Zung Depression Scake (ZDA) showed high internal consistency and reliability (α= 0.80). Most adolescents show no depression (81.5%). However, 18.2% have depressive mood or dysthymia and 0.3% major depression. There is highly significant association between depression (p = 0.000) gender (p = 0.000) and age group (p = 0.043), being the most prominent values in a group of 15 to 18 years and in females. As schooling level increases, the risk of depression, on the basis of the number of failures, being most evident in those that failed once. Parents being married or not also influences the manifestation of depression (p=.001), being most evident in young people whose parents are not married. Has significant influence on the appearance of symptoms of depression young people they have disease (p = 0.000), drinking alcohol (p = 0.000), lack of socializing with colleagues (p = 0.000) and sports (p = 0.000). We pretend that these data contribute to the statistics of the depression in the youthsand be an incentive to scientific and academic community for future research and development support of strategic programs with specific interventions to promote mental health of young people and social and educational policies.
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