Depressed teenagers: causes for teenage depression 1

Depressed teenagers: depression can be passed down through families

It’s said that if a depressed teenager has a close relative who also has suffered from depression, then this could be a contributing factor.I agree because depression is largely as the result of a negative outlook towards life, which we learn from a close relative.

Depression is, somehow, a skill. It’s like to say, ‘life scares me, let’s become powerless’. The opposite is also possible, however, ‘life scares me, let’s be brave’. Unfortunately, more and more people fail to develop a positive outlook towards life, and thus get stuck within depression.

One sign of this failure is the common outlook towards death. Death is seen as something that shouldn’t even be talked about. Actually, it’s because we die that life is beautiful. I think that we fear death because we fear life. We fear death could take us before we really begin to live, and to see life in a positive light.

Anyway, it’s obvious that when a teen has a close relative who sees only the dark in life and never the light, then they too can subconsciously think: “What is the point in living if there is only the dark side of life waiting for me?”

To see only the dark in life is a form of neurosis, because it’s to see reality in a partial way. In reality there is the dark side and there is the light. There is the good and there is the bad. In fact,the good things outweigh the bad.

Depressed teenagers learn this neurosis from their close relative, and they practice it very well. Too well in fact. To them this learned neurosis is a good thing. The teenager subconsciously thinks: “If that relative of mine is doing that, I guess it must be good. Let me learn it too”.

It’s also true that our mind is very flexible. The relative, who suffered from depression, could alternatively choose to investigate deeply the causes of their depression, and could eventually become a teacher of a more positive outlook towards life.

All it takes is for one to begin to think. In a society where thinking is seen as embarrassing or scary, it is also a starting point towards a more human life. Depression being a rejection of our non-human existence, if we begin to respect our humanity, depression is much less likely to happen.

Depressed teenagers: are major life stresses a cause for depression?

Let’s imagine that one or more of the following events happens to a teen:

• a family break-up
• a school failure
• bullying
• experience of prejudice and social isolation because of sexual preferences
• child abuse
• loss of a parent
• an accident
• a broken relationship
• moving to another area

Let’s ask ourselves:

• Who did the depressed teenagers have as model to follow?
• How are negative events generally dealt with in the social environment the teen lives in?

In life anything can happen. Rich people become poor, poor people become rich (far from being a happy event for a lot of people), illness, school failure, broken love, loss of job, robbery, more recently, identity theft, separation and divorce, the opposite party of yours winning the elections, your working life destroyed in an instant, annoying colleagues, awful boss, the list is endless.

Did the depressed teenager ever know someone who practised the art of tolerating uncertainty?

One of the attributes of life, not the only one, is insecurity. All the negative events I listed above mean that life is insecure.We shouldn’t seek certainty. We should train ourselves to tolerate uncertainty.

If the depressed teenagers have parents who get crazy at every little annoyance they stumble upon in life, no wonder that they don’t learn to tolerate insecurity, and that they can’t deal with any major life stress. Nobody taught them how to cope.

At the present time, you have parents who get awfully angry or upset or worried if their teen comes back from school with a bad mark. That’s how teens learn not to tolerate insecurity. When insecurity strikes, it finds them completely unprepared. Hence, depression is possible.

You switch on the TV and you can see a lot, really a lot, of people reacting badly to insecurity. Everything is the pretext for a drama. A negative one showing a low tolerance for insecurity.I suspect it’s even done on purpose. The media show us people who can’t tolerate insecurity to make us think that it’s a normal intolerance, and we don’t need to adapt or to grow.

The media want us unhappy because it’s easier to control and dominate unhappy people. Tolerance of insecurity is one of the most important traits of a happy person.

It is incredibly beneficial, for our happiness, for us to learn to tolerate insecurity, and consequently pass this tolerance and happiness on to our teenagers.