Today, many teens face mental health problems like depression and anxiety, which has brought worries to parents. However, the most challenging thing for a parent is to learn their child has a mental illness.
Usually, a child does not show their concern through facial expression, and this is where you have to take the lead.
Depression is not about mood swings, and it’s more than that. As you may know, depression is not from one factor, i.e., several factors can also lead to depression. Life is tough, but teenagers have it more due to assignments, family problems, mood changes, friends, and social media. But, they do have you who can help them overcome it and become a confident person.
Signs Your Teenager Is Depressed
The most crucial thing a parent must know is their teenager’s wellbeing. Are they feeling good, are they happy, have problems, and many more are the questions parents must think and analyze.
When you see your child, you cannot know what is going on with them. So, here are some of the signs that may indicate your child is depressed.
Usually, anxiety goes hand in hand with depression. If you are depressed, you automatically feel anxious, while some people are anxious but not depressed. Anxiety involves breathing problems, racing heartbeat, grinding teeth, feeling fatigued, panic, worry, and many more. Nervousness may cause anxiety where people even get a dangerous panic attack.
1. Emotional Instability
Is your child showing symptoms of mood swings like feeling angry, sad, and irritable frequently? Usually, a depressed person is easily influenced by emotions, such as feeling too much anger, sadness, or irritability. So, when your child often starts to turn a small conversation into a big thing, i.e., suddenly gets angry and starts a fight, you need to be aware.
2. School Problem
Your child’s school performance will indicate whether they are depressed or not. Suppose your children don’t want to go to school, i.e. making a different excuse or plea, performance decreasing, low energy, or inability to concentrate. In that case, they might be feeling unhappy and sad. They may have problems with friends or teachers.
3. Sleeping
Depressed people tend to sleep a lot. Similarly, if you see your child sleeping very much like more than 12 hours, you must be cautious. While some cannot sleep at all, they tend to wake up all night. Irregular sleep patterns indicate your child is not feeling happy.
4. Smartphone Addiction
Depressed people usually are addicted to social media like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. They try to avoid or feel happy through social media, but typically social media increases their sadness. At the same time, some of them convey their feelings through social media.
5. Low Self Esteem
Self-esteem is the way to view yourself. Unfortunately, when your child has depression, they feel pessimistic. As a result, teenagers lose their confidence and find their appearance, ideas, and thoughts inferior to others.
6. Physical Injury
You have to check your children’s bodies regularly. Some teens try to harm themselves; if you see any self-harm mark like cut hands, this is worrisome as it may be a sign of depression. You have to seek help as soon as you see this.
7. Spending Time Alone
Some people like to spend alone time like introverts and many other people. So it is not easy to differentiate between these people. Still, if your children used to be extroverted and suddenly turned into lonely people, this might be one of the depression symptoms.
Why do Teens Develop Depression and Anxiety?
You might think teenagers don’t have any responsibility, so why are they feeling depressed? Depression is human nature and behavior which occurs due to stress and overthinking. A child is usually sensitive and overthinkers, which may lead them to develop depression.
As they cannot cope and do not understand the meaning of depression, this may lead them towards pain.
1. School Performance
When your child has too much or takes too much pressure in the study, like obtaining higher marks, this may create pressure and leads to depression. Usually, students are depressed due to their school assignments, evaluation, grading, and performance.
2. Friends
Friendship is vital for teenagers as they are the one who influences and discourages. When there’s conflict, disagreement, academic competence, jealousy, and competition between two or more friends, it leads to stress and depression for a short duration to an extended period.
3. Sexual Orientation
A romantic attraction between two or more people is Sexual Orientation. This attraction might be just a slight crush or may lead to massive development of feelings. In this case, depression occurs when your teenagers cannot cope with attraction, rejection, or are afraid to confess.
4. Nervousness
Some children cannot speak with others, mainly in the case of introverted and shy people. They are not able to convey their opinion to others. When they try to communicate with people or present in public, they feel weak and nervous. As a result, they may develop anxiety and depression.
5. Family Problem
The family problem is one significant cause of your children’s unstable minds. Family problems have a lot of effects on a child’s mind and psychology. Some examples of family problems are fights in the family, a divorce between parents, siblings fight, low income, and many more.
Effects of Depression and Anxiety
Depression and anxiety are not suitable for children’s healthy development because this is a phase where your brain develops a habit and thinking pattern. If your children start to show depression from an early age, this may haunt them until they grow into an adult.
1. Risk of Heart Attack
Anxiety increases heartbeats and in some severe cases, teenagers can also suffer a panic attack. Panic attacks may even lead to a Heart attack where panic attacks cause chest pains, rapid heartbeat increases, and inability to breathe.
2. Memory Loss
If your child cannot fully concentrate, i.e., mainly if they have stress, worry, or tension, this usually causes memory loss. If your children start to blank stare frequently, they may suffer from memory loss.
3. Weight Fluctuation
Usually, teenagers gain weight or lose weight due to eating disorders, food choices, overeating, or many other factors. However, if your child has dramatically gained weight or lost weight, they may be depressed.
4. Sleep Disorder
You cannot fall asleep, or you cannot get out of bed if you have depression. People generally cannot sleep due to overthinking, while people don’t want to do other activities due to low energy or don’t want to mingle with people and prefer sleeping
5. Fatigue and Tiredness
Teenagers are active and have a lot of energy. As I have said above, when you are depressed, you don’t want to do anything. Teenagers may feel low energy, fatigue, and tiredness when they haven’t done any hard work rather than sleeping.
6. Suicide
You may hear about many people committing suicide due to depression. When depression reaches a certain level, it leads to suicide. Depressed people have a higher chance of committing suicide, so act fast when you are aware of your teenagers’ depression.
Ways To Treat Your Child Depression and Anxiety
Depression shouldn’t be ignored because the result of depression is always devastating. As I told you, the effect of depression and anxiety leads to different mental problems and suicide. If you want your child to lead a happy and healthy life, you must take the lead and find ways to help them.
So, as parents, you should take charge and try to remove your children’s depression. Don’t be afraid and embarrassed because depression and anxiety are common, and every individual suffers. Here are some of the ways to cure depression and anxiety in your teenagers.
1.Understand their Feeling
Teenagers are sensitive, moody, and vulnerable in this phase where they cannot understand and control their feelings. Then how can you understand them? If you feel their thoughts and emotions are silly, don’t try to explain them.
Instead, try to understand how they are feeling, why they feel so that you can understand them properly and take the necessary step to reduce their depression. Sometimes this may also support your teen and motivate them to fight depression.
2. Focus on Listening Rather than Lecturing
When your teen starts talking, resist the temptation to condemn or pass judgment. What matters is that your child is expressing himself. While some children don’t express themselves, which creates a problem for a parent. Try not to show any negative emotions such as angry, crying, or tension. You need to make them believe that you are there for them and support them in this difficult time.
3.Try to be Gentle as well as Persistent
Generally, kids don’t like sharing their experiences with you and try to refuse your help. If they first refuse to let you in, don’t give up. Teens will find it challenging to discuss depression. And if they want to, they can find it difficult to articulate their emotions. Value your child’s level of ease when expressing your interest and desire to listen.
4. Make Time
Sometimes what children want is the time from you. You might be a busy working person, so make time for your kid and family. Find out how they are feeling and their emotions. If you are sure that they have depression and anxiety, then make time and listen to their problems.
5. Engage them in Activities
Extra activities are good for mental and physical health. Engage your child in different activities or enroll them in an academy to keep them busy. Include them in extra activities they show interest in and help to relieve stress and pressure like dance, singing, music, drama, and many more.
Remember, don’t give them pressure to do good in extra activities; only make sure that they are having fun. These activities help to exercise and maintain good health, whereas participation helps gain confidence and remove anxiety and depression.
6 . Set Screen Time
Teens often turn to the internet to escape their troubles, while the internet only worsens the condition. Social media are the primary example as you can see a beautiful and happy life in social media which may bring jealousy and unhappiness to your teenager. They may start to compare their life with other people, which makes them more vulnerable.
Besides social media, they may take help from inappropriate content, which often worsens their situation. The best way to reduce depression is to set a limit on screen time. Don’t give them more than 2 hours a day to use the internet. Instead of the internet, try to take them outside frequently.
7.Stay Emotionally Strong
Not only your children, but you should also have a stable mind. Try to judge what is good or bad for them especially try to maintain emotional stability. Often, parents cannot handle it well when they find out that their children are suffering from depression and anxiety.
8. Provide a Balanced Diet
Ensure your teen receives the nutrients they need for optimal brain health and mood care, such as balanced fats, high-quality protein, and fresh produce. Eating a lot of sugary, starchy snacks might trouble teenagers’ moods and make energy worse.
9. Provide Counselling and Treatment
Often take your teen’s advice when selecting a doctor or exploring recovery alternatives. However, don’t make rash assumptions or disregard your teen’s wishes if you expect them to be inspired and interested in their care. No therapy works unless your child accepts it, but if they don’t want to visit a therapist, be persistent and take them because it is an effective way to reduce depression.
10. Try to be Patient
The journey to depression and anxiety might be painful, but don’t be angry and let emotion get ahead of you. Curing depression takes from short to long duration, don’t feel irritated and wait patiently, and above all, believe in your child.
Conclusion
You are the core supporter of your child. Don’t let your child get beaten by depression, do what you can do for them. First, you should remember that if you know that your child is depressed, act faster because depression worsens day by day. And finally, don’t lose hope and be patient with them.
