Teenage Depression - Symptoms, Causes, Behaviour and Thoughts

Depression isn’t exclusive to adults – it can affect anyone. The persistent and long-lasting unhappiness characterising depression can have an enormous impact on how a young person thinks, behaves and feels.

When combined with the hormonal changes, academic expectations and peer pressure that teenagers typically experience, it can make day-to-day life a real struggle. Depression is not a pleasant illness to experience and many young people describe it as feeling like being tortured in their head. Anything that you hear gets turned into a negative by your brain. Even when a specialist says that depression is treatable, your brain tells you that you’ll be the only one this doctor can’t get better.

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In this article, you will get to know about the common causes of depression, the signs that your teenager may be suffering and what can you do to help them.

What can cause their DEPRESSION?

Depression in teenagers can have obvious triggers such as:

A relationship ending
Losing someone they love
Not passing something that is important to them

But many teenagers develop symptoms of depression and cannot identify any reasons for them. When this happens, a family history of depression and genetics might be coming into play.

1. Symptom – Low mood

Behaviour – Isolating themselves
Thoughts – No one really likes me. Everyone has fun without me being there. No one really cares about me

2. Symptom – Thoughts of self harm

Behaviour – Self harm
Thoughts – I’m rubbish, I deserve to suffer, I cannot take this anymore

3. Symptom – Suicidal thoughts

Behaviour – Preoccupied, as they try to distract themselves from these thoughts or make plans to act on them
Thoughts – People would be better off without me. They wouldn’t be upset for long

4. Symptom – Changes in sleep pattern

Behaviour – Struggling to get to sleep, walking up a lot in the night or walking very early. The opposite can happen where they want to sleep all the time
Thoughts – I’m so rubbish, I’m never going to achieve anything

5. Symptom – Lack of energy

Behaviour – Struggling to do anything other than the minimum they have to do each day
Thoughts – I don’t achieve anything, I’m a waste of space

6. Symptom – Loss of motivation towards activities they use to enjoy

Behaviour – Stopping clubs and hobbies
Thoughts – I’m a boring person and rubbish at everything

7. Symptom – Poor concentration

Behaviour – Decrease in academic performance
Thoughts – I’m going to let everyone down

8. Symptom – Feeling hopeless

Behaviour – Struggling to think about the future or look forward to anything
Thoughts – Nothing will ever get better. I will never succeed

8. Symptom – Feeling guilty about little things

Behaviour – Avoiding people to try not to upset anyone
Thoughts – Everything that goes wrong is all my fault

9. Symptom – Changes in appetite

Behaviour – Either not hungry or comfort eating
Thoughts – I can’t be bothered to make any food for myself

What to do if you think your teenager has DEPRESSION?

Listen, listen, listen (and don’t judge)

If you are concerned about your child, sit down calmly with them and explain that you are worried as they do not seem themselves. Be careful that the young person does not take this as criticism. As you know, positive information they receive will wash away and anything that can be turned into a negative will be focused on and magnified to help reinforce their negative thoughts.

Help in a way they are comfortable with

If the young person is struggling, calmly explain to them that they might be depressed. Let them know that depression is treatable, but you understand it is a horrible place to be when you are suffering with it.

Give them statistics such as ‘one in 10 young people have a diagnosable mental illness at any one time’ and explain that depression is common so that they don’t feel different or unusual – and repeat it is treatable.

Advise them that it would be worth taking them to a doctor to find out if they are unwell with depression, and if so, to get them the right support.

They need to be able to place their trust in doctors and adults who have always cared for them. Explain that if they see a doctor, the doctor does not have to share everything with you if they want to talk in confidence. However, explain you are willing to listen too, and will not get upset and are willing to help in any way they feel comfortable with. A GP should be able to refer you to a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist who can make the right diagnosis and recommend a treatment plan.

Reduce risks

Give them the phone numbers for Samaritans and Child Line. If they have self-harming or suicidal thoughts, ask them to share those thoughts with you in a way that they feel OK with, so you can help keep them safe. They could text you, write their thoughts down, or talk to you about them when feeling calm and perhaps distracted with an activity.

Things you can do to reduce risks include locking away tablets and asking the young person what websites they are accessing online, and talking through whether these are really helpful to them or not.

Ask how they would like you to support them; they may just want hugs, a distraction such as watching a film with you or not to be left alone at night time. Give them useful apps to look at such as
Headspace or Calm Harm.

Stay calm

Stay calm and help your child feel that it is safe to talk to you. If you need to discuss what they tell you with another family member or friend for your own support, ensure they do not feel their confidence is being broken or that you are telling everyone about them.

Most importantly, get them professional help. Depression is a horrible illness that causes risks to the young person but is treatable, and the earlier treatment is accessed the better.

How to support their journey through RECOVERY

Keep lines of communication open

It is so important to help them communicate their risks while they are getting better, as recovering from depression is a journey that can take two to three months or more.

Many young people prefer communicating their risks by text, where they use single words such as red to mean they are having thoughts that could be dangerous to them. There needs to be an agreement about how you will react if they tell you their risks, so they feel safe to do so.

Managing everyone’s expectations

Depression is treatable with professional help, but it is a journey with its ups and downs. As a teenager starts to recover, they will have better moments, and then better days, which will increase in frequency to the point where they feel they have recovered sufficiently. During the journey, there will be dips to a lower state of mind.

When this happens, the drop between moods may seem significant, as it is a bigger change in mood from when they were low all the time. It is important to inform them that this happens as part of recovery so they do not feel like they are back at square one. The dips will gradually become less severe and less frequent until they stop and their mood fluctuations reach their healthy range again.

Understanding early warning signs

Once a young person is better, it is important to allow therapists to help them understand what their early warning signs of becoming unwell would be. These are different for everyone. If your child and family can understand the early warning signs of relapse, they can get access to support as quickly as possible and use strategies given by therapists to prevent themselves from becoming unwell again.

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