SIGNS OF DEPRESSION IN A TEENAGER

Teenage depression is not a bad mood or a bad temper, but a serious problem for a child that requires close attention from parents. I remember my adolescence. How I shook the nerves of my attentive, anxiously loving parents.

 Tantrums, leaving the house, skipping classes, smoking through the window, obscene language, inconceivable makeup, and a strange manner of dressing. I did whatever I wanted, I rebelled against I don’t know what, and I felt completely miserable.

Bad girl

But I still got off lightly, but my school friend once tightly curtained the windows in her room lay down on the sofa and got up from it only after two months. It was lucky that it was summer vacation, otherwise, I even know … They would have been expelled from school, or I would have become a repeater – she, a former almost excellent student.

She was 16 years old. She did not wash her face, did not comb her hair, did not go out, did not answer the phone, hardly ate, did not read. “She always lies with her nose to the wall in silence,” her mother complained.

At first, her friends’ parents didn’t know which crooked goat to drive up to her, then they took her to the doctor, who talked with her for a long time about something uninteresting, as she later said: “He prescribed me pills, and, finally, everyone left me at rest”.

Remember everything

By autumn she was fine. She no longer experienced such states, my longing also dissipated, and I did not remember that sad time. She graduated from high school and college, got married, had children. Everything was fine until the moment when, first, the eldest son, then the youngest, his voice began to break, and they suddenly began to snap at innocent remarks or requests. That’s when I remembered everything. To relive that experience again, but now from the position of my mother, I didn’t want to at all, and I decided to study the material. Starting with statistics:

• Australian scientists conducted a study in which 400 teenagers aged 10 to 14 participated. Forty of them were diagnosed with clinical depression, and half were prone to depression in the future.

• According to British psychologists, the peak of depressive disorders occurs during the transition from adolescence to adolescence – this is the period from 16 to 19 years.

• Our domestic experts testify that only one teenager out of five receives assistance. The rest have to manage on their own. And by the way, girls are three times more likely than boys to suffer from depression.

• In general, all parents need to be prepared for the fact that their girls, delicate flowers, and boy hooligans, having entered the age of hormonal storms, may not be able to cope with themselves. And they can’t do without the help of adults.

Make love, no war

Helping a rude, aggressive, and obnoxious teenager is difficult. So you want to crush him with parental authority, moralizing, references to your own experience, punish, build, rein in. But all this not only does not work but also aggravates, I was convinced of this myself.

I came up with another way for myself.

When I felt that a conflict was brewing, I remembered the time when my boys were small. It happens that a child, tired of running around and daytime impressions, cannot calm down and fall asleep, although, it would seem, lie down and rest. But he, utterly excited, continues to jump and yell, but there is no strength anymore, a little more and the nervous system will give out a tantrum.

In such situations, you do not need to educate, but you just need to love.

Hug, sing a song, drink tea with buns and read a fairy tale. The truth is, every mother knows how to calm her baby.

Here is a novice teenager – he is the same kid. He is just as confused, his nervous system under the hormonal storm is just as imperfect, and therefore he must first be loved and protected, and then be a teacher-mentor.

In the end, we are adults, to be able to cope with our irritation and desire to teach.

Parental debt

Having a history of communicating with a depressed girlfriend, two relatively peaceful adolescents of sons, and a number of studied psychological manuals, I would highlight a few points.

• Support. The child must know that the parents are on his side, that they will unconditionally do everything possible for him.

• Tongue behind teeth. There is no need to ask a teenager a lot of questions, to show curiosity – it looks like a desire to control, and now it is literally a red rag for a child.

• Delicacy, respect, recognition of personal boundaries. A teenager is not yet an adult, as we understand. But he understands himself differently, you have to force yourself to accept it.

• Do not teach to live. If the child has not withdrawn into himself and continues to share some thoughts, and impressions with his parents, there is no need to evaluate them. Right/wrong, stupid/smart, and so on. If there is a good example, it can be told precisely as an alternative, another option. But without moralizing and edification.

Of course, in adolescence, many children are quite aggressive, it is not easy to communicate with them, they often have mood swings – all this is not yet depression. But so that the child does not get sick with it, it is quite possible to take preventive measures.

Symptoms of depression in a teenager

Actually, these are all the same characteristic features of adolescence, but deeper, sharper, longer:

• anger, hostility, asociality,

• restlessness, tearfulness, hysteria,

• loss of interest in anything, lethargy,

• a sharp decline in school performance,

• refusal to communicate, isolation from others,

• internet addiction,

• run away from home.

These are all non-verbal cries for help. But quite often it happens when a child says terrible things or even jokes about them. For example, about suicide: “I would rather die”, “I want to disappear forever”, “I see no way out”. If this happens, then a visit to the doctor becomes absolutely urgent.

Depression is a serious thing, you should not rely on “it will pass by itself, this age”, avoid consulting a specialist and be afraid of drug treatment. A bad mood is just a mood, and depression is a disease that requires special treatment.