Research objectives were to identify psychosocial factors that influence in the etiology of depression, to apprehend and to compare the social representations of depression elaborated by teenagers in Gymnasium, in public and private schools from two Northeastern Brazil capital cities, being them Natal/RN and Teresina/PI. 505 subjects took part in this research, being 269 from Teresina and 236 from Natal. It was used as instrument the Children Depression Inventory and Words Free Association Test (WFAT). The sample from Teresina/PI presented a symptomatology index higher than Natal/RN's. About genres differences, it was verified that the masculine genre subjects present depressive signs more related to obedience and conduct problems, as the girls would develop more subjective signs. Analysis of the data taken from WFAT found out that the social representations from the analyzed subjects, in general, show unfitness from depressive subject in the psycho-affective and psychosocial inter-relationships.
social representations; depression; teenagers
