Suicide among teenagers and young people is frighteningly increasing in almost every country around the world. A big effort has started to help and support depressed young people to overcome their troubles before they take a fatal decision, but according to the experience I have gathered by helping young people to overcome their relationships troubles and according to other authors, maybe young people who are suffering from depression are not receiving the best support according to the real causes of their problem.
This is not because of lack of knowledge or lack of good will to patients. Every person involved in giving support to young sad people is making their best to help them. It is the outcome of the communication failure caused by the resiliency of teenagers to talk about the main reasons of their troubles.
Teenage depression has been mainly treated as a problem itself. Therapy for overcoming grief, sadness, anxiety, depressive periods and suicidal tendencies - if they are present - and to avoid or to overcome the most common symptoms of depressive disorders like depression, insomnia, anxiety, alcohol or drug abuse and suicidal or aggressive behavior is a priority, but often we forget that these are symptoms of a more complex and sometimes hidden situation.
Most times we are handling the symptoms but the basic causes are not treated properly. This happens mostly because they don't know the real reasons basically because young people don't talk about the unknown cause of their depression.
Some professionals think that in most cases the basic reasons of a depression are unknown even for the patients themselves. The fact that we have found is that most times young people really know the cause of their disorder, but they don't want to talk about it with their therapist.
What could be the reason that very much teenagers are suffering from this kind of trouble?
The most known causes are abuse, being victims of bullying; conflicts at home, among the more important is their parent's divorce and lack of money; the widely known effect of hormones, having low self-esteem, stressful life events and abuse of substances. Well, all of them are worth of study and treatment, but what is not commonly known, is that not every of them are real causes of depression, some are symptoms from another trouble you must dig deeply to find it out if you want to help them correctly.
After asking repeatedly about those reasons and most times after gaining their confidence the reason surges giving us a better understanding of their situation and the treatment we should bring to them from the beginning.
Most young people, once they feel confidence to talk about their problems say that they are suffering from a lack of love and attention.
Unless you were into attending depressed young people (and much times to adult people too) you couldn't believe how many times we hear that they are really depressed because they want to have a boyfriend/girlfriend or that they are experiencing a relationship break up, and everything that results from this condition is what we know as low esteem, drug abuse, suicidal thoughts, bullying, low scholar achievement, laziness, indifference to everything, lack of life goals, aggressiveness, overweight, eating disorders, etc. Of course this is not the only one cause to these disorders, but though this could sound odd, unattended depression caused by unrequited love is one of the main causes.
A broken heart condition is as important as any other stressful life condition.
Once therapists become aware of this condition, they start each treatment from a session in what they promote confidence with the patient and they try to find out if the patient's condition is a result from any sentimental issue. If the patient is suffering from a broken heart condition (yes, we have to talk and to treat this fact as seriously as any other better known distressing condition) we lead our efforts to help the patient to get the person he/she loves back in their life. Once the patient receives treatment for the real cause of the depression, then the other symptoms disappear or are very less difficult to overcome.
What it was very surprising is that in most cases we were treating the troubles and symptoms under our own assumptions about the causes, without knowing that what they really want and need is support on getting that beloved person back in their life!
Most times we are treating the wrong causes of teenage depression not because any mistake we made, but because most depressed people, predominantly the young ones, are resilient to talk about their sentimental issues, sometimes because they feel ashamed of being dumped by someone, sometimes because the main reason is that their parents don't accept or they assume that they will not accept their mate, and sometimes because they think that there is no treatment or method that would give them back their beloved one.
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