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Teenage Depression
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I was talking on the phone last night to my dad who's a teacher at a local high school. He was telling me about the amount of girls at his school that have started wearing large sweat bands on their forearms since the media has been focusing on self-harming. He questioned one of the bright girls in the class that he does advanced tuition for and she told him that they do it as an attention stunt. That to the best of her knowledge there was only one girl in her year that had scars on her arms and that the majority of girls where doing it because it was the current “buzz topic”. He was also telling me that a significant minority of the kids he teaches in the first year are taking Ritalin and the number of kids in the last two years who are on Prozac or other combinations of mood elevating drugs is unbelievable.
I’m in no way versed on this topic at all and was wondering if anyone could offer any insight into what is going on? Is this genuine advancement in the diagnosis of mental illness or is it doctors medicating kids unnecessarily? Has a "depression culture" sprung up or has depression always been there going untreated?
I’m in no way versed on this topic at all and was wondering if anyone could offer any insight into what is going on? Is this genuine advancement in the diagnosis of mental illness or is it doctors medicating kids unnecessarily? Has a "depression culture" sprung up or has depression always been there going untreated?
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It seems that alot of people think it is "cool" to act like you are depressed now. Meaning those with a real problem, often get overlooked. Bloody popular culture.
I think these days a) its become more socially acceptable to say I've got depression b) its less accepted to now be a moody teenager and sit in your bedroom.
If you don't mind me asking, how old are you, what where you angry at and what thought process did you go through to end up with the conclusion that self harming was either a solution or a way of helping you cope with the situation?
Were / are you on medication for the depression? If you were aware that that you were stressed and this was the cause of why you were feeling low, then why not try tackle the source of the stress rather than the symptoms of it?
Again I reiterate that I’ve no experience with the problem myself and this is all new ground for me. I'm just trying to get some sort of perspective on how young people who theoretically should be having one of the most care free times of their life are feeling pressured and stressed to the point of depression and self abuse
When you feel "down" (where do these directions come from?) your serotonin levels drop. At least one of the drugs doctors prescribe boosts serotonin by an amazing amount.
The rest just put you to sleep.
When you physically hurt yourself, serotonin is produced, which is the nasty bit for self harmers - it actually works. (Unlike talking your problems over or fending off concerned relatives which usually make it worse.)
I found that alot as well.
Its far more likely to be the bodies opiates actually, pain relief hormones which are triggered by external pain.
here ya go -
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro99/web3/Ho.html
http://www.apollohealth.com/new_content/circadian%20rhythms_disorders/depression/serotonin_depression.html
http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/cause.html
Simeon et al. (1992) found that self-injurious behavior was significantly negatively correlated with number of platelet imipramine binding sites (self-injurers have fewer platelet imipramine binding sites, a level of serotonin activity) and note that this "may reflect central serotonergic dysfunction with reduced presynaptic serotonin release. . . . Serotonergic dysfunction may facilitate self-mutilation."
of course, fuckwit doctors aren't looking for what causes low serotonin or how to cure it naturally, they are looking to get more customers for their drugs.
Are anxiety and panic attack symptomatic of stress or another causal factor?
See to a certain extent that makes sense to me. If you're low on a certain chemical then surely there is a reason for it. Whether it be environemental causes that are responsible for depression or the lack of production of one or more chemicals then treating the causes of this would make more sense than providing a "top up" through medication.
Again my medical knowledge is nil so i may well be incredibly off the mark.
Have you ever been able to identify the causes of your panic attacks?
If i'm asking for information at any point that you'd rather not put forward publically, or at all, you can either pm me or tell me you don't want to discuss things further.
But also, my dad got funny with me, thinking i was attention seeking and over reacting to things, which didn't help and made me worse
Did the anxiety / panic attacks and depression start after you felt that the the stress of school got too much or were they about before hand?
Do you enjoy school (as much as one can enjoy it) normally?
I think doctors are far more likely to diagnose depression than ever before. Even as little as ten years ago doctors would just tell teenagers to cheer up, and send them on their merry way. Now they will actually give a decent hearing to teenaged depressives.
"Teen angst" is a term that is always used to belittle teenage depressives, but I think it is unfair. Teenaged depression is often linked to age and hormones I think- I've got a lot better since I left my teens- but that doesn't mean its not real, not serious, and not in need of treatment. Just because the suicidal ideation is linked to teenage hormones doesn't make it less real for the depressed person.
I think self-harming has become a bit "trendy" because of the media publicity, but I think it concerns me deeply that people dismiss all self-harm as "attention-seeking". I was a serious self-harmer for several years, I have deep scarring that will never disappear all over my arms and chest, and I certainly didn't want attention. I wanted the exact opposite really, I didn't want anyone to know.
Self-harming behaviour is very very addictive. It feels good- there are endorphins, other chemicals, and just watching the blood trickle down your arms into a pool is very cathartic too. It's actually quite pleasant watching the destruction as your blood trickles down you.
I think with depression caused by environment its often a chicken and an egg situation. People are bullied because they are not confident and exuberant, and so they become more and more lonely, withdrawn and sad when they are bullied. This makes the bullying worse, and also makes the person suffering from the bullies feel worse. I think most people are mocked and picked on at some stage in their lives, but some people have the confidence to combat it and some don't. This isn't to say that the bullied are to blame for being bullied- far from it- but people simply don't bully people who will fight back.
Schools are useless when it comes to bullying. Teachers will stand there and ignore obvious abuse, claiming its "horseplay". I've had PE teachers join in with the abuse because I was overweight and crap at football- they probably didn't realise that they were bullying, but that's what it was. If the teachers are doing it then what everyone else says must be true, so why complain to other teachers? It's not bullying if its true, is it?
Much of my problems come from being bullied for many many years, and it destroyed any self-esteem I may have had. I hated school, I hated being a teenager, I hated being me I guess.
But in a more general sense, I think there is more awareness of depression, and more willingness to diagnose depression. There isn't the stigma attached to depression that there once was (though I still lie on job application forms about my medical history through necessity). People are more willing to be depressed, and put a label on down feelings. Some people will inevitably over-diagnose themselves, and consider mild dysphoria to be acute depression, but that doesn't mean that in most cases depression is present.
I think as well that people have more time to be depressed. In the olden days people were too busy working to keep their families in food and clothes to be depressed, but now they have the luxury of being able to feel things instead of mindlessly working, eating, sleeping and shitting.
That certainly clears a lot of things up. Just a few further questions:
I'm really curious how self-harming even enters a persons mind as an option of dealing with depression? It's seems like such a far removed solution that i can't get to grips with the inital thought process that must go on.
How and where do you draw the distinction between a bad day, week, month etc and depression. I've had some pretty low times through one reason or another but i've never once considered taking medication or self harming to allieviate my mood.
It depends on the person, 'depression' is such a broad term its in many ways misleading because people consider it one condition, when its not.
If you ask 10 people who have been depressed and you're likely to get 10 different versions. Though just the inability to cope with your current enviroment is the key one, a feeling that things can not and will not get better.
Most people will have been in a situation at some point where they've thought "Shit, i can't see how this is situation going to get better", i know i certainly have. Is it the way that you deal with things from then on that determines whether or not you fall into a depressive state, or is it much more medically orientated than that?
Such as - I don't see any teenagers today who have loads more to cope with than i did as a teenager but maybe i'm missing something......
I'm not sure there is, different pressures certainly, but not really less.
I was a teenager not all that long ago you know
So we seem to be drawing towards an individuals abilty to deal with stress, pressure and other negative influences certainly plays a large part in the the development of depression. Would it also be fair to say that the individuals confidence plays its part in the persons ability to cope?
I really would like you to ellaborate because I fail to see what more there is to worry about then when my mother was a teenager in the 60's.
There is much more pressure, particularly in an academic sense. Examinations are now pretty much non-stop from age 13, they all count far more, and if you don't do well you are consigned as a failure. Even more so than ten years ago, certainly far more so since my parents were at school. You couldn't leave school at 15 with no qualifications and succeed in life now, unlike when my dad left school in 1970, for instance.
Body image and being attractive are more important; or, more to the point, the ideal image is so unrealistic now compared to ten or twenty years ago. You wouldn't get a normal-sized person like Carrie Fisher as a sexy lead actress now, for instance.
Young people are probably vilified more than they ever were in the past. Youth is blamed for every ill in society, and youth is much more disenfranchised than it used to be.
This isn't to say it was easy being a teen way back when, but I do think there is more pressure. And less societal support and encouragement.