According to a survey titled “Depression among Adolescents in Taipei Area”
conducted by John Tung Foundation (2004), 84.2% of the surveyed adolescents have
experienced depression, 15.3% reported that they feel depressed almost everyday, and 33.6%
said that depression occurs to them once a week. In terms of stress sources, 56.7% of them
considered that their depression comes from school stress, 50.9% thought that their
depression is caused by interpersonal relations, and 45.6% attributed their depression to
academic tests. From the above statistics, it can be inferred that school is the main source of
stress for adolescents, and stress is one of the important factors causing depression. Besides,
the survey also revealed that depressed people are eight times more likely to commit suicide
than normal people (John Tung Foundation, 2004). In all levels of schools, deaths caused by
self-injury and suicide account for 12% of all deaths, a ratio slightly smaller than that of
traffic accidents (Department of Health, Executive Yuan, 2006). According to Campus
Security Report Center, Ministry of Education (2009), college students have most reported
suicide cases, followed by senior/vocational high school students and junior high school
students