Depression in Teens

Asia White White 1
English 3
Research Paper
Mr. Cohen

“A lot of what passes for depression these days is nothing more than a body saying that it needs help.” Depression is defined as an illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts and that affects the way a person eats, sleeps, feels about him or herself, and thinks about things (MedicineNet.com). Most social issues in today’s world affect teenagers and causes depression. The main social issues that affect teens today are teen pregnancy, peer pressure, teen violence, social media, and sexual orientation. Depression in teens is overlooked as hormones or a “teen attitude”. Depression is increasing at an alarming rate for teens in America. One in five teens suffers from depression. According to Mental Health America, the symptoms of a depressed child are as follows; poor performance in school, substance abuse, changes in eating or sleeping patterns, and suicidal thoughts and/or actions. Around five- thousand teens, ages 15 -24, kill themselves (www.nmha.org) each year. Four out of five teens who attempt suicide have given warnings, but it could be possible their parents do not pay their child any attention. Feelings of neglect could also lead to depression. Parents should be the first to notice any changes in their child, and if need be, get them some help. Aside from social issues, parents could be the reason for their child’s depression. Death and divorce can lead to depression (www.nmha.org). Depression in adolescents has been an ongoing issue.

White 2 Depression was first called melancholia and appeared in the second millennium B.C. (MentalHelp.net). During this time, all mental illnesses were considered demonic possessions and because of this many mentally unstable people were kicked to the streets. It wasn't until Dr. John Cade, the first psychiatrist to discover depression and administer a definite process of treatment, that the belief to be depressed was actually understood treated. Dr. Cade believed that only adults and elders could be diagnosed with depression, but the 20th century is known as the “age of anxiety” and teens are just as likely to become diagnosed with depression as an adult. With all the issues that come along in a teen’s life, sadly, depression becomes most common in teenagers. Stress is a risk factor for depression in teens. School work, home life, losing a family member all could lead to stress. I know the feeling of being stressed when trying to get all of my work turned in on time and correct. Family could even cause stress when pushing a child too much during the school year. Life at home can be terrible for some people. For instance, a family could be suffering financially so the child could not receive all the brand new clothes and shoes which cause bullying. Bullying could lead straight to depression. Losing a loved one is a period in life that I witnessed myself and stress couldn’t even begin to explain the way I felt when dealing with my aunt’s death. Sometimes kids try to pick themselves up and move on, but it’s easier said than done. Not everyone can move on as I did when mourning for a long period of time, depression could slowly creep up on you like a child’s nightmare or boogey monster (MentalHelp.net). Life is White 3 full of ups and downs and becoming stressed is not the answer. Many aspects lead to depression in teen, the world just needs to open their eyes and receive the big picture. Peer pressure is defined as, the pressure that you feel to behave in a particular way because your friends or people in your group expect it, according to Cambridge Dictionaries online. Peer pressure is one of the leading causes of depression. Peer pressure leads to children dressing and acting a certain way when around friends. Because of peer pressure, many kids do things that they would not normally do, like, do drugs or drink alcohol, bully another child, start to fail classes, and dropout of school. About three million teenagers smoke, according to the website Smoking-Facts. These statistics are alarming to parents, because smoking is highly addictive and dangerous to a teen's health. It was proven that smoking could also lead to depression. A 2008 study done by Healthmeup.com surveyed 3,000 people found that while smokers had a 6.6 per cent risk of developing lifetime frequency of major depression; it was 2.9 per cent for non-smokers.The Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) survey revealed that about 70% of male habitual smokers and 80% of female habitual smokers had major depression.The study also established that 30% of smokers show some symptoms of depression. The root cause behind it is nicotine! Acting as a stimulant it affects the release of neurotransmitters in the brain; consequently, the brain becomes so addicted to the drug that it no longer functions normally without it. After 20-30 minutes of smoking the last cigarette, nicotine withdrawal begins and this leads to anxiety, which is very closely related to depression. Smoking-facts also notes that if your teen's friends smoke, he is thirteen times more likely to follow along. White 4 Peer pressure has a strong influence over whether a teen picks up a cigarette for the first time. High school is not for everyone, but peer pressure makes it all the more harder. Recent studies reported by the US Department of Education revealed nearly 1.2 million students between the ages of fifteen and twenty four dropped out of high school in one year alone because of peer pressure. Friends and/or peer pressure from other high school drop outs, family or other outside relationships can influence a teen to drop out of school. This also encompasses teens who opt to drop out high school to join a gang or to be accepted in other teen groups and street communities. Parents could also put a huge stress on their child doing exceptional in school by pressuring them to do very well in school. When in some cases school is just not for everyone because everyone learn at different rates. Some parents just don't care about the education of their child, and this can be due to divorce which leads to the lack of a parent or maybe a drug addicted parent that really can’t support themselves let alone a child. Studies conducted by www.livestrong.com on five thousand high school drop outs revealed seventy five percent dropped out of high school because they lack sufficient parental support and educational encouragement. Depression can be derived from peer pressure because one may try to do all possible things to “fit in” and when turned down or picked on, a child begins to act out and even becomes depressed. Another social issue that affects teenagers, and can lead to depression, is the social media. The social media plays a huge part in today’s teenage society. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, movies, and video games can cause a child to become depressed.A study released today by The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on the impact of social media on children, White 5 adolescents and families, cites that ‘Facebook depression’ is one of the risk factors that teens may face with overexposure to social media. Facebook depression is an affliction that results from establishing a presence on social networking sites, spending a great deal of time on these sites and then feeling unaccepted among peers online. Similar to depression outside the internet world due to lack of acceptance, Facebook depression can cause anxiety and withdrawal, as well as a propensity towards engaging in risky activities such as substance abuse, unsafe sex or self-destructive behaviors.
There’s been a lot of buzz about whether video games are habit-forming, and whether parents are exaggerating when they say their teenagers are “addicted” to game playing. Now new research on children who are heavy gamers suggests parents may have something else to worry about: depression. The latest study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, followed 3,000 students in the third, fourth, seventh and eighth grades in Singapore. Children who were more impulsive and less comfortable with other children spent more time playing video games, the study found. Two years later, these heavy gamers, who played an average of 31 hours a week, compared with 19 hours a week for other students, were more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and social phobias. They were also more likely to see their grades in school drop and have worse relationships with their parents.

The social media could also lead to cyber bullying. Cyber bullying affects many adolescents and teens on a daily basis. Cyber bullying involves using technology, like cell phones and the Internet, to bully or harass another person (www.bullyingstatistics.org). Cyber bullying can take place in many forms; sending mean messages, spreading rumors on the Internet, posting hurtful

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or threatening messages, and sexting could go viral. Cyber bullying could cause a child to become depressed and suicidal even. According to The Associated Press, there have been at least 12 cases in the U.S. since 2003 in which children and young adults between 11 and 18 killed themselves after falling victim to some form of “cyber bullying”. Cyber bullying generally occurs while the teen is at home where they usually feel safe. It is usually more intense because bullies are braver online than in person, and victims begin to feel they cannot escape their harassers. Cyber bullying could be very hard for a teenager to deal with on their own, that is why friends and family play an important role in a teenagers’ life.

Teen pregnancies are growing at an extreme rate. Teens usually mistakenly get pregnant and that alone could cause depression on top of the rumors and people constantly taking about them and judging them.Out of all teen pregnancies, 82% are unintended. Teen pregnancy accounts for 20% of all unplanned pregnancies annually (About.com). In the Journal of Health and Social Behavior analysis showed that teenage mothers had higher levels of depression than other teenagers or adult mothers, but the experience of teenage childbearing did not appear to be the cause. “Rather, teenage mothers’ depression levels were already higher than their peers’ before they became pregnant, and they remained higher after childbearing and into early and middle adulthood,” the researchers report.Women usually are diagnosed with a specific type of depression after the child is born called postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is a serious illness that can occur in the first few months after childbirth (www.webmd.com). Along with depression of being a teenage mother postpartum depression could take an even larger toll White 7 on a teenage mother. Life is hard nowadays and Although teenage mothers today are more likely to finish high school or earn their GEDs than in the past, pregnant teens are less likely to attend college than teens who do not become pregnant. Without a college degree how can a mother support their child? It would be very difficult.