Teen Depression ?

Q: This is a place for teens to come together and talk about depression. I have made this page because I have not found another page that focuses on teenage depression although it is a real problem. I myself am 14 years old and depressed. I have put a message board in which we can all post and help each other.

A:There's a lack of appreciation that depression is a dysregulation of mood, just as diabetes is a dysregulation of blood sugar. For more than 10 years, doctors have been studying a group of 1,700 Oregon teen-agers, aged 14 to 18, who were randomly selected from nine high schools. The doctors originally wanted to find out how common depression and other mental disorders were in this group of "normal" teen-agers. In this study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, they focused on teens who originally were found to be depressed but had recovered when questioned again a year later to see what

happened to them as they got older. These subjects were interviewed by phone around the time of their 24th birthdays. Conflict with parents is not uncommon in families in which there's a depressed parent or adolescent. This is not the mopiness or withdrawal that we think about when we think about depression. It's often irritability, anger, and conflict on the part of the adolescent and/or the parent. Poor academic performance can be a signal of depression in some children, says Kirchner, but in others, depressive feelings and low self-esteem may trigger a need to overcompensate. "They work hard to please and be accepted by others, to get the best grades,"