Young, healthy, beautiful, intelligent and unhappy. Is this how we view some teenagers? They should enjoy life, go crazy with their peers, develop passions and look to the future with optimism. Meanwhile, they behave like life-tired centenarians. Warning, it could be depression.
How does depression manifest itself?
Parents and teachers should be concerned about certain behaviors of children and mentees. It would be best to have a depression test for adolescents (such tests can be found on the internet), but rarely will any young person volunteer to do so. Therefore, it is worth knowing the symptoms that characterize this disease. In adolescents, depression may manifest itself in a similar way to adults, but there are also symptoms unusual for the disease. When the behaviors listed below last longer than 3 months, it is a sign that we are dealing with a disease and not depression typical of adolescence.
Depression in adolescents takes the following forms:
1) rebellious attitude: negating authority, not controlling anger, aggression, sometimes self-harm (self-harm, suicide attempts), reaching for alcohol, legal highs and drugs;
2) apathetic-abulatory attitude: dropping out of school, neglecting appearance (not maintaining hygiene), sitting idly at home or wandering around the city aimlessly;
3) attitude of resignation: pessimistic attitude to life and the future, lack of faith in positive interpersonal relationships, no plans for the future, the belief that it is not worth trying, because everything is bad;
4) labile attitude: mood swings from excitement, “fooling around”, overestimating one’s abilities to deep sadness.
Find out if you may be depressed by taking a simple test
Where to go for help?
Young people immersed in depression do not like and do not want to talk about their problems even with their loved ones. They often discover themselves – by finding a depression test for teenagers online – that the condition that makes them unhappy and the problems that plague them is not real reality, but an illness. And the disease must be treated.
However, a teenager himself will not go to a psychologist or psychiatrist. This is the role of parents: help the child. But how to do it when a domestic rebel or a total pessimist avoids talking and close contact with his parents. How to make a son or daughter open up and help herself? Here are some tips:
- look for opportunities to talk after all,
- not to criticize, not to complain,
- do not give advice, such as: get a grip,
- do not exaggerate problems, do not frighten with consequences (because you will not pass the exam, you will be fine),
- do not underestimate your problems if your teenager cheats on them (this is stupid, in some time you will laugh about it yourself),
- suggest (supposedly by accident) a depression test so that the young person can realize that it requires the help of a specialist,
- take the child to a psychologist or psychiatrist.
For adolescent depression, treatment is group or individual psychotherapy.