by Past Parallel

Created on: July 01, 2009

Depression Among Teens

Stop for a moment and think back to when you were a teenager. Think about all of the wonderful things about those times. Reminisce if you will about those times when your body started doing funny things, you started growing ugly hairs in weird places, you never seemed to have the right shoes, and the person you had a crush on was not that interested in you. Yes, those were the good old days all right. The teen years have always been a stressful, turbulent time in the life of a young person. The years are full of wonder, change, enlightenment, and horror. I cannot recall ever having a conversation with someone about the subject who did not share some sort of embarrassing or painful memory with me about their time spent as a teenager. These years are the perfect breeding ground for feelings of depression and loneliness. This is not a new phenomenon, but there are contemporary happenings with the ability to magnify those negative feelings. The current age of technology and media bombardment combine to make depression amongst the teenage population a stealthy and often lethal condition.

When I was a teenager I was a well-balanced, well-liked, athletic boy. I was not the most popular kid in my school, but I never went without friends. I had a supportive, healthy family despite the death of my father when I was 10. All in all I had nothing to be depressed about. There were many instances during those years when I battled depression. I was lucky enough to have distractions like sports, family, friends, and church, but even with all of these things in my life I still suffered from depression.

Contrast my teen years with the experience of many teenagers today. I read an article a year or so ago that explained despite all of the internet chat rooms, clubs, and social networking sites people live on, people are much more socially isolated than they were in the 1950s. Reading the article's survey data staggered me. People simply do not have the social and community outlets that used to be common place in our society. It is precisely such outlets a teenager needs when trying to navigate the rough waters of those years. There were several times when I was a teenager and my body was changing, and I was totally convinced these changes were not proper. Had it not been for the talk I heard in the locker room from other boys I would have not known these changes were normal.

Most people can rather quickly produce an answer to the question, "What was

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