posted
Why is this so prevalent? Doesn't it scare anyone else? Some adults have made light of the fact that many teens are depressed and suicidal, saying teenagers live so much in the moment that they can't see beyond the sadness of this week or even this year.
Baloney, says I. I'm sure immaturity is some of it, but I remember being a teenager, and I remember being sad, and I wasn't afraid my sadness would last forever. Something is wrong in the world--teens aren't getting something fundamental that they need in order to be happy human beings. Maybe this something is something that should come from parents; maybe it isn't.
But I think this needs to stop. I for one want to provide a world where my children can have fulfilling teenage years--not just years they suffer through. What needs to change?
Posts: 1903 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:Some adults have made light of the fact that many teens are depressed and suicidal, saying teenagers live so much in the moment that they can't see beyond the sadness of this week or even this year.
That's a pretty good description of me as a depressed and approaching suicidal teen.
quote:What needs to change?
For me, the #1 thing that would have helped me is if I had waited to get into romantic relationships until I was older. I just wasn't ready to deal with such emotionally tumultuous things when I was 14, 15, 16.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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This is just from my own experience of dealing with people my own age who are terminally sad, but I think one thing that really depresses and frightens teenagers and young people is a lack of direction. Often I have friends who come to me or we're just talking and they say "what's going to become of me! I'm going to end up on the street!" These are people who attend a prestigious University and have every likelyhood of graduating with an extremely good degree and becoming something very meaningful and important! They aren't failiures at all in any way!
They're not just whining, they're genuinely worried that they, who have the skills and the brains to achieve what they want to, are going to amount to nothing or worse, are going to be stuck in a job they hate. As a result, they often seem to slip into a vague depression about the future.
Aside from this, there's a vague impending doom feeling about the world these days. The environment... terrorism... war... disaster... disease/epidemic... Looking forward to the future with these worries constantly in the news is not exactly easy.
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I blame society for misrepresenting what real happiness is, and I blame some parents for not being there to teach their children the difference.
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Porter, you may be right. After all, there were teens like Romeo and Juliet way back in Shakespeare's day.
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posted
The problem is it isn't just about living in the moment. Depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain that causes problems with emotions. If you have a teen that shows signs of depression you should take them to a psychologist. Medication is not always necessary but neither should parents rule it out simply because they don't like the idea of medication. Keep an open mind and talk to your child's doctor. There are some physicians who will prescribe anti-depressants without having their patients speak to a counsellor. I do not reccommend this. If your child's doctor suggests anti-depressants make sure to have them see a counsellor as well. Particularly because there is such thing as periodic depression, and not all people need to continue on medication for more than a few weeks.
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Your success (and thus happiness) should not be linked to one thing exclusively, such as a career or your family, or your friends. You should have lots of things that can potentially make you happy. You should take joy in succeeding and you should make sure that you pay attention to more than one scale of success.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I think depression is a natural side effect of approaching maturity. It is a time when you are putting away childish things. It is a time when many of your illusions about the real world are being shattered. The bulk of your teenage years is spent "preparing" for being an adult, and experiencing all the pressures and fears that go along with eminent change. It is natural that the depression, fear, uncertainty, and yes, suicide that often go along with these times of transition will then be higher during teenage years. The only way I see to change this significantly would be to somehow make the time of transition earlier or later as a society. Since that wouldn't eliminate the phenomenon, but only transfer it to childhood or early adulthood, I don't see that as a viable course of action. (And indeed might be impossible, for instance, in the case of physical transitioning.)
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posted
ANd what about the whole...body chemicals aspects of depression? It's not just about society or parents being wrong.
Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
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andi, I'm not talking about a specific child here. Goodness, I'm only 22 myself. I'm talking about the widespread epidemic of depression among teens and wondering what's causing it. There's no way that many teens have a chemical imbalance--at least some of them are genuinely sad. Why are they? Why are so many teens sad when they look at their world?
I'd like to add one: happiness has nothing to do with the people around you. Love doesn't make you happy; it shouldn't be the only thing you have in life that makes you happy. Neither should friendship. Losing a friend or a significant other is sad, but life is about making more friends and meeting the next person who will knock your socks off. And in the meantime, don't worry about it. There are many wonderful things in life besides love (not to knock love, of course).
Posts: 1903 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Ruth, I think that there are a couple of contributing factors. Hormones are unbelievably powerful (as I'm sure you can attest with the pregnancy -- I know I was fairly awed by how manipulated I was by my hormones while pregnant) and teenagers are going through physical maturation. That's a huge transformation, as huge, IMO, as pregnancy, just drawn out over a longer period. Add to this the loss of childhood, entering into a scary new world of adulthood.
Finally, add into it a false expectation that we should be happy or at least not actively sad all of the time.
I think it's reasonable to expect the teen years to be traumatic -- and that to some extent it is a good thing it is so hard. Hard times help us grow.
Thing is, I see childhood this way. First, you're a baby and totally dependent. There really isn't an "I" at this point, you're just part of Mommy. Then you're a toddler, discovering that you're seperate from your parents. This is a very hard time too for children, transitioning from total dependence to greater independence, having to find that balance between doing it yourself and being taken care of. After age 3 or so, there starts the idyllic part of childhood (IMO) where struggles for power are for the most part resolved and for almost ten years, you are learning and growing under the protection and guidance of your parents and teachers. There are occasional hard times, but the major hormone thrusts and power struggles of toddlerhood are behind you. Mostly, the hard times are going to be circumstantial rather than endemic to the age. Then sometime after 10, you begin transitioning again, this time into full independence -- adulthood. So it gets hard again just being you, figuring out where you place in the world, who you are, what you're about.
I think that understanding the transitions of childhood and making adjustments to parenting style can help children through the transitions more easily. You can make it harder for a toddler by not setting boundaries or (worse) by setting boundaries inconsistently. The more consistent the boundary setting, the easier the transition for the child -- though part of the ease of transition has to do with the child himself. Some kids roll with change, some have to fight it tooth and nail. It's still hard no matter how easy or hard they appear to take it. It's a major change.
By the same token, I think parents can make it harder or easier for their teens as they transition into adulthood. 'Course, my oldest is 12, so I'm only at the beginning of testing my theories on this. I'm finding, though, that the more I act as consultant rather than authoritarian, the better things go, for both of us. I *do* act as authoritarian, but I try to reserve it for times when it's really necessary. Otherwise, I make suggestions and try to step back and just be there if things don't work out quite the way he wanted. Basically, I am trying to hand over power as gently as I can.
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quote: happiness has nothing to do with the people around you.
I couldn't disagree more. Happiness has everything to do with the people around you. No man is an island, as they say. The ticket to lasting happiness is to spread it around among all you know. When friends fail you (and they will), you have other friends to support you and with whom you can share. When lovers disappoint you (and they will) you have family and friends to help you make things right or move on. Life is about much more than moving on to the next friend and lover. Mature life is about cherishing the relationships you build over time and lamenting the loss of even one friend or lover. If you can happily lose a friend or lover, I suspect they weren't really either in the first place.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Okay, I didn't say it right. What I mean is, just because you haven't found your soulmate yet when you're 18 is no reason to give up hope and think you'll never find him/her. Just because your friends suddenly start acting like jerks and reject you doesn't mean you are a horrible person who deserves to be treated like that. Go make new friends, or rely on the friends who don't treat you like that. Give love and cherish the relationships that help you grow and you will find joy.
I know this because I spent my teenage years more or less friendless (more in junior high, less by the time I was 17). I internalized the way others treated me, thought I deserved it. Nobody deserves that, and depression is just waiting to swallow people who think they deserve to be treated badly.
Posts: 1903 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I can second jeniwren as to the power of hormones.
When I was severely hypothyroid recently for a month or so, the litany that was with me so constantly through my teen years started rearing its ugly head: "I hate my life... I hate my life... I hate my life..." This freaked me out, because I hadn't had that particular thought in years, and on the whole, my life was going pretty well. Still, I had to keep it from popping back into my head.
Hormones are only a part of the problem, of course.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:There's no way that many teens have a chemical imbalance--at least some of them are genuinely sad
In depression, sadness is still genuine. Feelings are genuine things, no matter what the cause. Even if someone is delusional and seeing things, the fear that might cause them is still real.
The body's glands are incredibly connected. Puberty brings about hormonal changes and these changes affect other hormones and other neurochemical transmitters (serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine). The pituitary affects the thyroid gland which affects the adrenal gland and so on. Anything off in one of them can throw things off in another. Because of all those connections, that's why thyroid testing is done before putting anyone one an antidepressant. Because if the root cause isn't a problem with the chemical reuptake of serotonin or the formation of serotonin itself, but something with the thyroid (which could be caused by the thyroid alone, or something wrong with the pitutary gland, etc), then that root cause should be treated and everything else should (should) right itself.
These things take time. SSRI's (the most common form of antidepressant) take about four weeks to be at it's full effectiveness (there's one that can show effects in about two weeks) because the supplies of serotonin not being taken up need to build up. It doesn't happen overnight. It isn't like any type of stimulant, where the release of the chemical is flooding and immediate (stimulants trigger dopamine, primarily).
The adolescent brain is also still forming and finalizing neural pathways. It's supposed that formative time is why mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar appear most commonly at the far-end of adolescence and early adulthood.
Also, society is different, obviously. It could be that there isn't more depression, but that we as a group are noticing more than we used to. Seeing what happens in adolescence and not just blowing it off as another teen "phase." Stuff like that.
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posted
I think teenagers have always been hyper-sensitive and often depressed. Different societies at different times just deal with it differently.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I think a good deal of it does have to do with the loss of childhood. When I was younger, it seemed like a lot more things were possible. Now that I'm older (of course, I'm only twenty) and in my last years of undergrad, it makes me kind of sad to know that a lot of my dreams aren't realistic. And it seems to MATTER more for things to be realistic nowadays. So I think a lot of sadness in teenagers is part of their growing up and realizing that they aren't going to be an astronaut or a rockstar or whatever.
Another thing is that when you're a teenager, every little thing that's going on in your life seems like such a huge deal. If you get into a fight with your girl/boyfriend, or if your parents don't let you go to so-and-so's party, or whatever...you don't worry so much about big picture things, I don't think, because you really aren't as aware of them. So things that adults would consider to be pretty trivial stick in your head and bother you a whole lot more than they "should."
posted
Teenagers are simultaneously powerless and under great pressure. Plus all relationships are under great upheaval, friendships and relationships with family. Add to that the hormonal storms, and I'd be shocked if they weren't prone to all extremes of emotions.
As for how to help them, I'm not sure. Whatever you do, don't give up and don't label them. Negative labels suck, and they aren't finished human beings yet anyway - it isn't fair.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
From one perspective, depression seems prevalent because its finally making it into the spotlight. Suicide has been an issue since the dawn of civilization with different factors for each era and culture. We're finally in an age when its being approached medically and its beginning to lose some of its stigma.
I've had people tell me that my generation is one of "Entitlement." I've had adults tell me quite firmly that young adults and teens expect too much. We were told too often that we could grow up to be anything we wanted, that we can go to any college we want, etc.
I don't think its a matter of feeling entitled, but a matter of feeling pressured. There's this constant push to be the best, to be competitive. We see young adults of television starting a company out of their dorm rooms and making millions in their first year. We see more and more students graduating with 4.0s.
We're living in an age where success isn't celebrated...its required. When it gets to a point that people feel they HAVE to make straight As, or they HAVE to have a boyfriend/girlfriend, they only bemoan their failures because they can't celebrate the gifts in life.
I don't think people know how to be happy anymore. They know how to feel successful or feel important. But they don't have pride or self-esteem or joy.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I would say children are growing up too fast. Everything starts younger and younger on a much wider scale than it did before. Given that they deal with more adult issues at an earlier age, I think they are just too immature to deal with it.
For instance, I have noticed that dating is far more prevelant amoung a much younger crowd (5th and 6th graders) and it wasn't always like that when I was younger. Kids at that age don't understand something as complex as dating-heck-lots of older people don't always understand dating, but at an older age, you are more mature and can deal with things like that better.
Sex is also more prevelant amoung a younger generation of children. These are children dealing with adult issues. I think most children are just far too immature to have to worry about things like that so when it comes to something going wrong, they don't act properly. This, I believe, contributes to some of the depression amoung teenagers. There is so much pressure to grow up fast but they just aren't always ready.
Posts: 306 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Mack, me too. It's one of the reasons I haven't had eye surgery to correct my vision. I'm waiting for something to come along that NASA would approve.
Plan B is make a lot of money and be a space tourist.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I had a dream once that my then-boyfriend and I were both ridiculously successful and became space tourists thirty years in the future. That was a nice dream.
I don't know that things are necessarily starting earlier. I mean, people are actually marrying later. And sex has always been around...we're just more aware of it now.
posted
For me, the depression I went through was caused by my environment - horribly abusive parents who destroyed every shred of self that I had. I believed every nasty and vile thing they said to me, and even with a decade of really good therapy, I still believe some of it, as much as I try otherwise. I was suicidal from the time I was a small child right through until my late twenties. I'm over it, now, though.
It's difficult not having the feeling of being loved and appreciated and an accurate sense of self-worth. I don't know how much this helps, though.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
It's really hard to say, but I think one thing I might highlight is the overwhelming sense that everything you do is merely preparation for the next thing, and not an end in and of itself. You need good grades in high school so you can get into a good college, good grades in college so you can get a good job, etc. Most classwork is done only for the sake of the course; it's very rare for secondary or undergraduate students to get to do much original research of value.
Posts: 650 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
This is just my own little pseudo-theory, as I know very little about depression as a medical condition or about sociological studies but...
Could the prevalence of depression and pathos in teens be partially due to boredom? What I mean is, before modern technological advancements such as tractors and sewing machines and washing machines and electric heating, lots of kids would have been required to do a lot more chores than they are today. I'm not saying that kids today don't have any chores, just that the ones they have are not as taxing or time-consuming. And the tasks kids would have had in the past were things that were actually important to the running of the household, i.e. caring for livestock, mending clothes, churning butter, etc. (Of course, I'm thinking of this from an American perspective, since that's what I'm familiar with.) Having a necessary job that really mattered would likely have given children a sense of purpose and worth that seems to have become harder for 20th-21st century kids to find. Along with depression, things like self-esteem and image problems have become more and more high-profile.
Am I explaining this at all comprehensibly? I don't know of any sources to back this up, and it mostly comes from an amalgamation of the history I've absorbed over the years and things like the Little House and Anne of Green Gables books. ( ) If I'm totally off the mark, feel free to shoot me down and correct me. But this all makes sense in my head.
Posts: 952 | Registered: Jun 2005
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One thing I learned about anxiety and depression is that too much time alone to think makes things worse. Its hard to be angsty while doing physical labor. Go jump on an elliptical machine and try to feel stressed or sad with your muscles burning and endorphins racing through your bloodstream.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I completely agree with the excersize thing. Endorphins change everything.
Also, teenagers are at the stage in their lives where they have the ability to think about things in a critical way, but they don't so much have the power to do anything about it. They are still considered children by society's standards, and so can't do much to change their situation.
Also, depression is a combination of both nature and nurture. Teenagers go through so many changes both physically and mentally in so few years. Hormones and chemical inbalances have a lot to do with it. Also, teenagers tend to become aware of situations in their childhood that they did not recognize before. As teenagers they may come to realize that their parents didn't love them the way that they needed or that their friends aren't as nice as they could be. But unlike adults, teenagers are usually under the impression that this is their fault, and blame it on themselves.
With these realisations come the suspicion that more things might be wrong, and they blame everything that's going wrong on themselves.
And I speak from recent experience.
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
For me, I probably was at my worst last year. It was paranoia first. Paranoid about many stupid things. Well, we decided to try to work with it, and I was put on some odd medicince. Paranoia was destroyed, but with it, all mental focus. I felt like a vegetable, which was an odd thing for me, I like to think and focus.
So, even after taking me off that drug, I was still... a bit in active in the mind for months, it seemed like. And during that time, I became depressed. The cure for me was counseling.
Now, I'm still a teenager, and I may get more derpessive huge drops like I did then, but, I kind of doubt it, or at least as bad.
Heck, I'm a little depressed right now, but I know it'll be past soon, I just... need a few simple things to go right for me.
The real question to me is why did I post this? No idea, maybe it was some lame defense or answers for teenagers.
Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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In fact, I think I'm going to turn my paperwork in tomorrow to get counseling from my school. I have too much running around in my brain, and my friends are getting sick of hearing it...because sometimes, you just really need to talk something out before you can feel any better about it...and sometimes, that takes a while.
Going in to get help is so scary. Hopefully, it'll do you some good. I hated my school counselor (interns only know so much) but it did help me realize that I needed professional assistance. A year later and I don't regret a moment of it.
If anyone wants to talk, pass a note my way. I've been through my own personal hell but I'm coming out on the sunnyside now and would be happy to offer any advice, an ear, support, whatever.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
For me, going to my friends always made me feel weak and incredibly pathetic. I realize now, and maybe I should have a long time ago, that what really gets people through are the friendships they develop and the notion that we can share, with our friends, the doubts, anger, sadness, and lonliness that depresses us so. I no longer feel weak or pathetic, I feel better when I talk to my friends. I think thats the lesson we all learn when we become older and mature. That no matter what, talking about the things that hurt us only help to begin to heal the wounds we feel so deeply. And, I think thats the lesson we have to show teenagers. You are NOT weak, pathetic, or stupid if you need to talk to someone about the emotional problems which plague you. In fact, you are brave and strong.
Posts: 457 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
I really think the exercise theory is valid. I know several people who do intense exercise mainly for its antidepressant effects.
I think my own suicidal depression starting in my college years came from a combination of not enough exercise, not enough sunshine in the optic nerve, poor sleep habits, and bad nutrition.
You always assign some reason based on things going on in your life, but when you aren't depressed, things like that can happen to you and it doesn't bother you so much. I mean you can be sad but not fall totally to ruin. You can cope still.
So partially it's the increased pressures and expectations of adulthood, I think. But even moreso it's physical biochemical things. People in college who are experiencing severe mood problems or depression should think first of those things. Did you start sleeping less regularly and eating less well when you went off to college? Do you get enough exercise and do you spend at least an hour outside during the daytime? Please don't discount these things when trying to understand and cope with feelings of hopelessness, instense sadness, self-loathing, or being overwhelmed with the difficulty of all you have to do.
I read in the book "Biological Clocks" that Americans now don't get nearly enough sunshine in their optic nerves to reset their biological clocks. The amount of light outdoors even on a cloudy day is many times higher than that indoors even on a sunny day. Your eyes adjust so that you don't realize the difference, but the ink of the black letters of a book gives off more light outdoors in the sunshine than the white page does inside. Get outside and exercise during the day! It will make you sleep so much better and it will make your brain happy.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Why is this so prevalent? Doesn't it scare anyone else? Some adults have made light of the fact that many teens are depressed and suicidal, saying teenagers live so much in the moment that they can't see beyond the sadness of this week or even this year.
I think the reverse is true.
Teenagers understand that they are becoming who they will be for the rest of their life. For the first time, more or less, they must confront the possibility that they are flawed in such a way that they will never be able to get what they want, or be who they want to be. They see things as problems that will trouble them for their whole lives, but lack the judgement to prioritize what problems are significant, what problems are normal, and what problems not to be worried about. Everything, it seems to some teenagers, could potentially ruin their whole lives.
quote:I don't think people know how to be happy anymore. They know how to feel successful or feel important. But they don't have pride or self-esteem or joy.
This is true, but it is an adult problem more than just a teenage problem. Part of the problem, I think, is that teen years are often the time when you are pursuaded to begin giving up real happiness in favor of fake happiness. I think many confuse this process with "putting away childish things", which gives a teenager the impression that becoming an adult is necessarily about giving up happiness.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
I've been depressed, but I could definitely assign a traumatic life event to it.
Now, though, if I'm unhappy, I can guarantee that I haven't been exercising. It's like an equation: exercise = happy Katie; no exercise = depressed Katie. This is really great stuff.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Teenagers understand that they are becoming who they will be for the rest of their life. For the first time, more or less, they must confront the possibility that they are flawed in such a way that they will never be able to get what they want, or be who they want to be. They see things as problems that will trouble them for their whole lives, but lack the judgement to prioritize what problems are significant, what problems are normal, and what problems not to be worried about. Everything, it seems to some teenagers, could potentially ruin their whole lives.
This is exactly what I've felt in the past and still feel when I'm depressed. As an example: Right now I'm a sophomore in college and I'm still having trouble making friends. At home I'm a fairly social person with several very close friends who I've had for years, and it feels like I've lost the ability to make new friends because I didn't really need it throughout high school. However, in my mind my situation now extends throughout my life and I live a life that is filled with loneliness. This makes me very depressed, which then leads to feeling guilty because I live a fairly charmed life and I should be happy in that. Which leads to more depression as I chastise myself for my weakness in not being able to handle this little thing, since so many other people have to handle so much more. Generally the cycle concludes with the conviction that I'm a failure as a human being.
At every stage I can recognize what stage I'm at. I know exactly what is happening. If I'm in the beginning stages and feeling fairly rested and don't have anything else triggering it I can usually pull myself out. But most of the time when I'm depressed I don't want to. I want to stop being depressed, but I don't want to engage in the activities that will end it. I much prefer feeling sorry for myself.
I think that's largely the problem. As teenagers who are depressed we want our depression to end, but we largely want someone else to fix it for us. I remember bewailing the fact that no one saw. No one was doing anything about how horrible I felt. No one can. I found that the only real way to end depression was to take responsiblity for my own life, for my emotions. Therapy isn't going to help if you just sit there waiting for your therapist to fix everything, you have to be willing to help him or her. This really isn't something I was prepared to do at all.
Please note I'm not talking about severe depression in this paragraph, this might be true there as well, but I don't know. I'm just talking about the "standard" teenage depression that I believe Brinestone was referencing in her original post.
posted
I can only speak for myself on this issue (and I just got out of my teenage years a few months ago). My depression in my late teens was always intertwined with my anxiety (or as I called it my tendency to overthink everything).
As a child, I was given this idea (from parents, from movies/TV, from some books, etc.) that if you worked hard and did your best that everything would work out and to some extent you would get what you want.
When I got to my teen years, I started to see that this isn't true (or at least not totally). A lot of times I might put forth a lot of effort and not succeed in what I was doing (although this is mainly in reference to social stuff, I always did well at academic stuff). After failing a few times, it makes a person start to think that even when they try they will fail.
Then the anxiety part comes in. I would overthink everything I was doing, which only hurt me more in the long run (ex. if asking a girl out is defined as hard, asking a girl out after overthinking is 1000 times hard). The overthinking also leads to pessimism in my case; over time I saw less and less opportunities to get what I want (all the way up to the point now where I doubt its very existence).
So to kind of summarize my thoughts here, I think there were probably 3 main things that led to my depression in my late teen years and into my 20's now.
1. The overly optimistic somewhat social idea that if you work hard you can get what you want (in regards to job, social stuff, education, whatever).
2. A chemical imbalance in the brain that leads to great levels of anxiety and depression.
3. Circumcstances, more or less. In a different set of circumstances, I may not have been as depressed. If certain decisions hadn't been made (or had been made differently), things would have worked out much differently in my case.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I agree with most, if not all comments here. However, I do have one question.
I've been suicidal for a few years now. I saw a counsellor- didn't help. I was on antidepressants- made me humb, where I could be sad OR happy. They finally determined that the depression I have is genetic- I'll live with it for the rest of my life. How do I solve this?
From my experience, the thing that most teens are looking for is something to hold on to. Think about it- more and more, parents are getting divorced, people move more often, there are so many things that CHANGE circumstances, teens just want something that STAYS THE SAME. I found this in God- that's just my view, and it's helped me immensly to have a close group of Christian friends who don't condemn me if I have that extra helping of dessert I didn't need, or watched a movie I shouldn't have watched. They just help me get through it. I contribute my happiness to God... even though I'l still suicidal at times, and I have scars on my arm less than a month old.
The point is, if we just had something stable, something constant, maybe we wouldn't feel so determined to change ourselves. THe pressure we're put under to get better, stronger, faster, is INCREDIBLE. I've gotten grounded for having a B in an AP class. I find that ridiculous. But maybe that's just me- maybe we need the pressure.
And maybe we're all being pampered too much. Here in the good old US of A, most kids have everything they'll ever need- thus we EXPECT to automatically get whatever we want. You don't see that kind of mentality in other countried- and the suicide rate is also a WHOLE lot less.
I could be wrong. I probably am. But I'm okay with that. Forgive me if this post made no sense.
Posts: 1591 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Tinros, in regards to the school pressure thing, some countries are worse. The first to come (and only one) that pops into my head is Japan. They have a high suicide rate for teens because school is so ultra competitive. Much worse than the US for sure. Still, I will agree that kids are under a lot of pressure. I don't think I would've been grounded for a B in an AP class, but it never came up (I worked way too hard at school ). I know about the pressure though.
As for how to combat the depression, I don't know. I just try distractions, things I enjoy that can consume time and keep me from the depressing line of thought. Also, it helps that I have a lot determination. I'm determined to not let my depression to get me so down that I give up on life. Maybe that's not determination though, maybe it's just the stubbornness I'm famous for. Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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I'm glad that religion has helped give you some stability in life.
I'd recommend to keep searching for a counselor. If your depression is something that will be a permanent fixture in your life, maybe you can find someone who will help teach you coping methods. Exercises, strategies, plans to help with bad urges hit you. I have a slight-case of OCD attached to my anxiety and there are factors about my personality that are counterproductive...so since I can't change my personality or the way my brain likes to run, I have various out-strategies to remove me from a bad mental situation. I still get self-destructive urges to hurt myself but now I have plans in place to help me cope until I can get myself to a safe place with other people around. Having plans, strategies, coping methods will also help add stability.
If you're receiving additional pressure from your family, look into family counseling. Being grounded for a B is irrational. The people close to you should be aware of your condition and there are probably things they can do to help. If anything about their behavior is harmful to you, you should consider getting a specialist involved so that it can be remedied.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote: The point is, if we just had something stable, something constant, maybe we wouldn't feel so determined to change ourselves.
In my opinion, this is the crux of the issue. For a history class last semster we had to read part of Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead (1928). Mead was an anthropologist who noted that Somoan adolecents did not go through the same turbulence as American teens. She believed that the difference lied in the sheer number of options that American kids have. There's thousands of religions to choose, thousands of careers, many different political factions, etc. etc. The incredible diversity in America just adds to this problem. Your mom might be Catholic, your Uncle Buddhist, and your best friend Baptist. People value and respect the opinions of their loved ones- but the beliefs are contradictory. There's so much pressure to choose the *right* path, but no matter what you pick, there's a good chance that somebody you deeply respect will think it's wrong. We're also incredibly individualistic, so most people don't have a strong community that they trust to tell them what to do. Having to try and determine what's right for oneself in our world of unlimmited options is not an easy task.
Mead contrasted this to Somoan life in the 1920s. Their culture had essentially one religion at the time. There were only a handful of jobs to choose from. And people usually stayed local and lived within the same community their entire lives. Consequently, adolesence was a relatively easy stage to go through.
Mead wrote this in the 20s, and I believe that since then the number of options available to American teens has mushroomed. I know that I've certainly had a rough time with it. It's so hard for me to pin down what I want to become or what really matters to me- in almost any area of life. And the choices I make now DO affect the future. From what major I choose, to who I date, to what I do with my spare time- these things define who I am and become part of my history. Sometimes the weight of all of these choices feels overwhelming and I question all of the decisions I've made and am making. Last year, I got so depressed that I started looking seriously into religion. I just so badly wanted somebody to tell me the RIGHT way to do things. But I could never convince myself that any set of beliefs was the right way. I'm still not sure what is right for me, but I do know that close friends are a big help in avoiding depression.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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That makes a lot of sense - I know I've often felt bewildered by the number of choices I could make, or can make currently. Sometimes my reaction is to decide that I can't decide, so I end up trapped by my own indecision, which is usually not a terribly cheerful or comforting place. I can see how this could easily escalate into full-scale depression/anxiety.
Posts: 952 | Registered: Jun 2005
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). I know about the pressure though.
