Have you ever thought about what the source of your child’s depression symptoms are? Have you discussed with them why they think they have depression?
A research project done recently in the United Kingdom studied 465 adolescent participants with diagnosed mild to severe depression. From the interviews with the participants, the researchers identified that the adolescents had three common beliefs about how their depression developed:
- One group was totally bewildered about how their depression happened. To them, it seemed as if their symptoms had just one day come out of nowhere.
- Another group thought their symptoms had started after a stressful experience, such as being rejected or bullied, witnessing violence in their families, or being ignored by their parents. The most common stressful situation mentioned by these adolescents was feeling pressured to do super well in school, and the researchers noted that there haven’t been enough studies done about this kind of stress—mostly researchers have studied stressful events like divorce or the death of a parent.
- The last group felt the depression came from something inside them, and they blamed themselves for their depression symptoms.
The researchers concluded that teens’ beliefs influence how they seek help for and participate in treatment to support their mental health. How did they draw this conclusion?
- If teens are totally bewildered about their depression, they might not be allowing themselves to think about it at all, so they might not ask for help.
- If they feel like the depression is because of a stressful experience and they are still going through that stress—like difficult schoolwork—then they might think that there’s nothing that will help unless they can get out of that situation, so they may not ask for help.
- If they feel like their depression is something they caused, they might feel guilty or embarrassed about getting help—and them might not even ask.
To read more about these issues, see our article about feeling guilty and about keeping up with academics.
Do you think your child relates to any of the three groups above? How might you discuss this with them?