Troubled Teens Resources

One area of teen crisis intervention is depression. Teenage depression, and depression in general, is reported as being on the rise. Some claim that that increase actually represents more depression being reported since the stigma attached to it has lessened.

Actual depression, in and of itself, is indeed a frightening and enervating experience for those who have it and those who live with them. But there is concern that it may be over-prescribed for, with perfectly healthy people deciding that their occasional, and quite normal, bout of the blues needs medicating.

The seriousness of depression was very clear to me when talking with a friend raising a teenage girl. In a girls boarding school since her freshman year, her father’s financial reversals brought her home. Finishing her senior year away from her friends threw her into a suicidal spin that her mother fears daily will be repeated.

Check with your trusted physicians as well as mental health specialists if you have concerns about your teen possibly being depressed. An article in Science Daily goes over basic information.

“Classic severe depression is fairly easy to recognize. However, there exist milder forms and variant forms that are less easy to recognize…

Depression generally presents as a persistent (more than 2 weeks) decrease in enthusiasm, motivation, energy, concentration, and enjoyment. It also can lead to sleep or appetite disturbance and feelings of worthlessness or guilt. Additionally, depression generally causes an individual to experience more medical problems and to be more susceptible to physical illness, including death.

Depression is NOT normal feelings of sadness, which ebb and flow according to situational factors.”

(Source)

This is an excerpt of an entry written by a teenager who, from what I can ascertain, has been studying up on teen suicide statistics. He reacts with the following….

“Scary eh? Honestly, I have anger problems, numbing pain through gaming and lastly, thoughts(thoughts only, I didn’t go anywhere dangerous) of suicide.
Behind the strong Shaun you see, hides a weaker form of him. Must be shocking for you to know now. But I guess, when troubles are voiced out, they get less fatal.
I think thats all I can write. Any further would be too personal… too dark… too hard to write.”
(source)

If you read the rest of his entry you witness a young mind grappling with self-awareness, with the act of observing himself (“I have anger problems, numbing pain through gaming..). You also see a young man whose method for dealing with emotional pain could be described as dissociative; something all humans do when they compartmentalize pain and sadness and live some other safer place within themselves.

Shaun sounds like a teen who is vulnerable and stands at a cross roads that teens reach so frequently as they navigate these vital years. It is at this juncture that the at-risk teen can choose to seek out drugs to numb their pain, or continue with a relatively less harmful numbing agent,such as Shaun’s “gaming”. It is here where emotional maturity can save a troubled teen, diverting them towards healthier alternatives.

“Behind the strong Shaun you see…”. So often, in the course of the thousand of demands that parents have on their attention, they fail to see behind the mask that a troubled teen will wear - especially if the teen fears imposing more stress with his own struggles. Teenage drug abuse is inextricably linked with teenage depression. Both can go on under the radar, but neither are invisible.