I get the call almost every week. How do I help my teenage son with depression?
Sounds scary? Well there are some things we can do.
It amazes me and concerns me a bit how much I get questions about teenage
depression and we know that this is an issue now. In fact, I was looking over the
statistics for teen depression. When kids reach the age of 12 or 13,
the statistics start to really skyrocket, maybe skyrockets the wrong word for it,
but they increase significantly as kids get into those teenage years for
depression and the related problems that come along with depression. We see it in
both boys and girls, tends to be a little more prominent for girls in those teen
years than it does for boys. The statistics I saw were from about 5% of
the population up to about 8% are experiencing some kind of significant
diagnoseable depression. Now depression is only diagnosed when it becomes severe
enough or prolonged enough to cause some significant impairment in that person's
life so beyond the clinical depression, I think there's a sub clinical depression
going on with our teenagers that is probably far more prominent than these
numbers that I'm sharing with you. I thought as we were approaching this
particular topic today, that it might be helpful to just give you some of the
things to watch out for. Sometimes you're going to pick up on some of these signs
and symptoms of depression where your son is fine but having some
challenges. You might pick up on these signs and symptoms as an indicator
that there's actually a clinical depression going on that's going to need
some more intensive treatment or response. Let's just talk about what
we're looking for to begin with. So I'm going to go clinical on you here.
Depression, regardless of age includes a depressed
or irritable mood and for kids, irritable is probably more common than depressed
in terms of what kind of an observable mood that you see,
okay. So irritability is one of those things, we're just going to be sensitive
to and it lasts for at least two weeks with at least five of the following
symptoms. I know you're not a psychologist and it's not your job to
diagnose your kids but I'm sharing this clinical information with you so that
you'll be better informed and you might choose to engage a professional, a
psychologist or a therapist or a counselor who can help you to get an
accurate diagnosis, even your family doctor can help with this. So here's the
symptom list, remember, it has to be at least two weeks of that depressed or
irritable mood with at least five of the following clinical signs and symptoms.
Here we go. Feeling sad or blue. Now that makes sense, right? Crying frequently. Now
may I add also that it's particularly concerning if these are something that's
not typical of your child? If your child always cries easily and
always has then we're not going to use this as a symptom, do you see what we're
saying? But if it's something that's a change or something that's new for your
kid then that's something you want to pay a little more attention to. A loss of
interest or pleasure in usual activities. So the things that they normally enjoy
doing yeah they're not so interested in them anymore. That's usually something to
pay attention to. A significant increase or decrease in appetite. Now here's
another little disclaimer, okay, because we're talking about teenagers
specifically. When kids get into their teenage years, there's all kinds of
factors that are making this more complicated including hormonal changes
and changes in their body and changes in their brain and in their interests and
in their socialization. I had a guy come in to see me once and he said, this is
just not like my kid at all. As we got further into it,
it's not his kid, it's his teenager. Hear the difference? Yeah, so there will be
some natural changes that are going to occur and it makes it a little tricky
because we have to kind of balance out. Alright, how much of this is
attributable to just becoming a teenager versus how much of this is something
that we should pay a little more close attention to? Continuing with the list. A
significant weight loss or failing to gain weight appropriately or gaining
excessive weight. So it's out of the ordinary in other words, not what you
would expect. A change in sleep pattern including an inability to sleep or
excessive sleeping. On the note of sleep, teenagers need more sleep than kids or
adults, it's just a developmental requirement that they have and usually
eight to ten hours of good solid sleep time is pretty typical for what
teenagers are needing so outside of that though, if they're sleeping all day or if
you're finding that it's excessive then that might be a sign or symptom.
Agitation, irritability or anger. Again, common in teenage years but we're
looking for something that is is more than you might expect to be normal.
Fatigue or loss of energy. A tendency to isolate from friends and family. Trouble
concentrating. In my earlier career, when I was just starting out as a
psychologist and I had a traditional psychotherapy practice, this was one of
the most troubling things for me in my practice because diagnosis is so
complicated. I just shared with you trouble concentrating, well that's also
the primary symptom of attention deficit disorder and sometimes you'll get
depression together with other diagnoses like ADHD or conduct disorder or some of
the other common childhood disorders that we see. So it's hard to pick it
apart sometimes. The next one on the list, feelings of worthlessness or excessive
guilt and then finally thoughts of suicide and incidentally, sadly, suicide
is the third leading cause of death for people ages 12 to 25. That's an
alarming statistic, that's something that we want to change an impact if we can
and there is a lot that we can do about it, that's why I'm sharing with you
this list. Now what can be done? Let's say that you're seeing some of those signs
and symptoms and that it's more than would be expected for a typical teenager
and oh by the way, if you're not sure, if this is your only teenager, you might
want to talk to some other parents, you might want to go online and get into a
community where you can kind of get a sense of what's the norm, not that the
norm is always healthy, okay? Because maybe you still want to do something
about some of these things even if it doesn't reach the level of clinical
depression but what if you're seeing some of these signs and symptoms and
it's severe enough that you think that there might be an issue? What can you do
about it? Therapy is helpful and the clinical
research shows that cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, some of
these therapy modalities have a lot of good track record for making some
significant impact on a depression kind of a manifestation. Get some help, talk to
some counselors, talk to a psychologist or a mental health professional that can
help you to to nail that down, tends to be very helpful. Changes in lifestyle and
behavior including diet, exercise, sleep patterns, sometimes a little adjustment
in those makes all the difference. Oh, and on the front of exercise, we have tested,
exercise, put it up against antidepressant medication, in the
clinical trials, exercise usually wins and teens tend to be very active for the
most part. If they're not, that's something that is going to help their
mood significantly to get active and to have that exercise in place.
I mentioned medication. Sometimes just the right medication is helpful. Now
get with a professional, talk to your doctor about this or a psychiatrist
who's experienced in treating adolescents because their particular
chemistry requires a little bit of yes with all the other changes that are
happening in their body and in their life. Other kinds of treatment,
complementary therapies, groups. So in addition to traditional therapy and
medication, there's all kinds of other supportive things that can help like
yoga or meditation or interest groups where they get to get involved with
other people their age, engaging in something that they're interested in, all
of these kinds of things can be helpful. I think the main thing is, let's open a
conversation here with our teenagers about what's really going on in their
life, we're going to watch for those signs and symptoms. There are a lot of
resources, even right here on this channel, look for the magnifying glass
because YouTube, I don't know if you knew this, YouTube is one of the largest
search engines on the planet and you will find enormous resources here, front
right here on this channel but also from some of my colleagues and other content
creators who are putting some information out there to help you as a
parent. We can do something about this. I am so glad you're here and teaming up
with us to take on depression. I think we can help each other as we share these
videos.
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