Definition
Depression is a feeling of severe despondency and dejection.
It’s a serious medical condition that can negatively affect one’s ability to connect with friends and family, enjoy normal daily activities, attend school and concentrate while there, and enjoy childhood.
It’s amazing how depression is fast becoming a common mood even amongst young folks.
This serious but treatable disorder is very rampant amongst teens and young adults, especially with sudden hormonal and physical changes, it is a mood disorder that causes persistent feelings of sadness and loss of interest. It sometimes makes you feel as if life is not worth living.
Symptoms
Common signs and symptoms of depression in children and teenagers are similar to those of adults, but there can be some differences.
- In younger children, symptoms of depression may include sadness, irritability, clinginess, worry, aches, pains, refusing to go to school, or being underweight.
- In teens, symptoms may include sadness, irritability, feeling negative and worthless, anger, poor performance or poor attendance at school, feeling misunderstood and extremely sensitive, using recreational drugs or alcohol, eating or sleeping too much, self-harm, loss of interest in normal activities, and avoidance of social interaction.
- In adults, common symptoms of depression include loss of interest in usually pleasurable activities, fatigue, changes in appetite, sleep, disturbances, and apathy. In women, depression may be more likely to cause feelings of sadness and worthlessness. Depression in men, on the other hand, maybe more likely to cause them to become withdrawn or to feel irritable, aggressive, or hostile
Causes
There are several factors varying from one person to another that could lead to this such as:
- Neglect
- Constantly hearing demeaning words
- Overwhelming feelings from parental/societal expectations (sometimes unrealistic)
- mental health issues such as bipolar
These all have a common factor, the feeling of self-doubt which borders on identity crisis.
Finding identity
Self-doubt stems from an identity crisis and the inability to answer the following question:
who am I?
Why am I here?
Why do I behave the way I do?
What’s my gift, talent, and SWOT? Can I be different and happy?
Is different bad?
Can I be unpopular and happy?
Can I enjoy my own company without seeking validation from multitudes of likes?
When one is not able to successfully find answers to these questions and more, it gives way to self-doubt which is the creeping but swift forerunner of depression if not immediately detected, addressed, and uprooted.
Parents, do you know?
It’s quite unfortunate too that a lot of parents/guardians/teachers do not put a good level of importance on answering these questions about their children/wards /students. The answers will give them an understanding of their children’s make-up and help to understand how to best nurture them, without asking an artist to become a scientist which leads our young ones to depression.
Evil progression
Persistent self-doubts lead to depression which has a grave capacity of leading to suicidal attempts or suicide itself and worst still, homicide (the killing of one person by another).
And for more retrospective deep-thinking youngsters who wonder about the world around them, and when the parents/society/churches/mosques/schools become evasive in answering such questions bothering on suffering, wickedness, poverty, sickness, war, sin, death, etc, this also can trigger God-doubt, sense of hopelessness and a plunge into depression.
How to help
Understand that depression is an illness that requires professional medical treatment if your teen is already considering suicide. At that point, you must engage professional help, not taking anything for granted.
Show empathy and be supportive. The importance of family and community support can never be overemphasized. It’s important to enlist the support of neighbors, friends, school, and places of worship in the healing and recovery of our depressed ones as the input of everyone around them can either make effective or totally useless what you’ve been building.
Ask questions about his moods out of compassion without criticism or being judgmental.
Allow her to express herself. Just lend listening ears. Be very careful about interjecting or being quick to proffer solutions. We are more relatable or perceived as human or have empathy when we don’t always claim to have a solution to every situation. Let your child be comfortable opening up about his worries without fear of being shut down or made to feel inadequate.
Magnify their strengths and celebrate positive achievements or activities. Concentrate more on her positive with commendations. Speak more positively than negatively to her.
Do kindly leave me your comments and thoughts.
Thank you!
