by Rob Kay

Created on: October 05, 2008   Last Updated: June 29, 2009

Writing as a teenager, I can say that teenage depression is no joke. For the non believers they may view teen depression as self pity or a way out, a scapegoat if you will. However, being a teenager and having to go through all the physical and psychological changes while dealing with the pressures of high school and college play tremendous tricks on a kid. How often do you see a teenager who hides what they are feeling or what is going on at home and puts on an act once they get to school? How many teens feel extremely overwhelmed without the pressure of their teachers or parents? The answer is a lot of teenagers. Depression is something that everyone goes through. Sure, you can medicate yourself all you want in attempt to "cure" your depression but medication is really only a crutch, a last second effort which never actually works unless you buy into it yourself.

I myself find the pressure of picking the right college to be a hard process. After all you can go to visit a school that has the upside of 45,000 kids or you can go to a school that has the downside of 1,500. More than half of kids that pick their college end up hating their decision within the first couple of weeks. The college process is a tremendous pressure only added by the stress of having to get good grades to even be considered by most of these schools. Parents pay tens of thousands of dollars for their kids to go to good private schools to even be considered by one of the "elite" schools, the ones that charge over $50,000 a year for the education they provide. If those parents' kids were to get a B in high school, can we all take a second to imagine the disappointment the parents throw at the kids?

Depression is not brought on by one thing. Just getting a B doesn't make a kid depressed; they wouldn't even know they had to be upset about a B if it wasn't the parents and the ultra competitive nature of the township that put the unwritten "No B Policy" up in the hallways. Receiving one bad grade wouldn't make every teenage kid depressed if there wasn't a consequence that followed. I realize that not all communities demand that much from their kids but those are not the communities that win the blue ribbons. The fact of the matter is, in the society that I live in at least, depression is common. Maybe not the go to the shrink and get dosed up kind of depression but the depression that is realizing every day is a struggle and the conversations and the pressure that you receive is ever mounting.

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