Depression: one-to-one intervention

When a teenager is depressed, their suffering isn’t the only reason it’s important to get help. In addition to the disorder itself, there are add-on effects that may cause lifelong issues. With depression symptoms comes include low energy and poor concentration, two factors that are likely to have a significant impact on social & academic functioning.

It’s easy to see the effects of poor academic functioning: falling behind in school undermines a young person’s confidence & self-image, and can impact their future if it’s prolonged. But social learning is just as critical as academic learning in adolescence. Deficits in social skills not only put depressed young people behind their peers, but in themselves can compound their depression.💜

Since adolescents are often moody, it can be difficult to recognize when your young person has become depressed, & might need help. The thing people tend to notice first is withdrawal, or when the teenager stops doing things they usually likes to do. There might be other changes in their mood, including sadness or irritability. Or in their behaviour, including, appetite, energy level, sleep patterns & academic performance. 

This is especially important because by the time family members and other people around a teenager note their lack of interest in most things, they have usually been depressed for some time. 

Depression is an internalizing disorder, i.e. one that disturbs a person’s emotional life, rather than an externalizing one, which takes the form of disruptive or problematic behaviour. As such, it takes a while not only for others to recognize it but often for the young person to realize that their thinking, & emotional responses, are disturbed.

There are actually two kinds of depression. In major depressive disorder—the most familiar form of depression—the symptoms occur in what may be severe episodes that tend to last from seven to nine months. But there is also another form of depression called dysthymia, in which the symptoms are milder, but they last longer, even years. So while the experience of dysthymia may be less debilitating for the young person at any given moment, the risk is that there is more accrued damage, more time in which the young person is kept out of the healthy development process.