A suicidal young man. Australian researchers unveiled on Tuesday a Twitter tool to map moods around the world in real-time to help improve the allocation of mental health services. PHOTO/FILE
In Summary
A teen who is depressed is vulnerable to alcohol and substance abuse, unplanned pregnancies, violence, self-mutilation or, even worse, suicide.
Here are some tale-tale signs that your teen may be depressed.
By REBECCA MUTHONI More by this Author
TEENAGE DEPRESSION runs deeper than just occasional mood swings.
It is a serious mental problem that can destroy the very essence of a teen’s personality and cause a devastating sense of despair, sadness, and anger.
A teen who is depressed is vulnerable to alcohol and substance abuse, unplanned pregnancies, violence, self-mutilation or, even worse, suicide.
Here are some tale-tale signs that your teen may be depressed.
1. Difficulty or inability to concentrate and focus. A teen who is depressed may find it difficult to concentrate and focus.
This might make it difficult for him or her to finish school work, be attentive to the teacher, remember lessons, or even pay attention to what others are saying.
2. Disinterest in food, even meals they previously loved.
Loss of interest in food or development of eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa, which can make a teen either gain or lose weight rapidly, can also be a sign that your teen is depressed.
3. Little energy or motivation for hobbies or activities.
A depressed teen may feel exhausted, tired, and drained most of the time and take longer to complete chores. With such feelings, a teen may have trouble motivating him or herself to care or do anything.
4. Constantly harbouring negative thoughts or exhibiting pessimism.
Depression can blur everything in a teen’s life, making the world around him or her look bleak and turn thoughts into those of helplessness and hopelessness.
A teen may think that the problems they face cannot be solved and that nothing matters.
He or she may believe he/she is not worth anything, even though it is not true. Depression can cause a teen to perceive life as not worth living, which can encourage thoughts of self-harm or suicide.
5. Sadness and hopelessness. Depression can lead your teen to always feel under the weather and this can run for weeks or more.
A depressed teen may feel abnormally sad, defeated, or discouraged. He or she may feel helpless, alone, rejected, or guilty.
All these emotions are part of a depressed mood. However, not all depressed teens feel sad most times.
For others, depression may be characterised by a long-lasting mood of feeling alienated, irritable, or easily annoyed.
6. Social withdrawal. When your teen is depressed, they may tend to lock themselves up.
Because of low energy and feelings of sadness, a depressed teen may pull away from family, friends, or hobbies. This usually can make a teen feel more isolated and lonely, hence making negative thinking and depression worse.
Apart from the above signs, depressed teens may also cry for no apparent reason and change their sleep habits.
If you are not sure whether a teen in your life is depressed or just “acting as a teenager”, consider how long he or she has been exhibiting the symptoms, their severity, and how different your teen has been acting from their usual self.
Any dramatic, lasting changes in mood, personality, or behaviour could be red flags of a deeper mental problem.
One fine winter's morning, the Manny came down from the attic. I saw him padding through the kitchen in soft slippers, apologetically filling a glass of water and retreating, as silently as he had come, back to his aerie.
He made small appearances throughout the day, like a dazed rodent, each time quietly filling a glass of water. Eventually, he accepted a proffered piece of gingerbread.
He must have emerged during the night, for by morning there had been further nibblings on the gingerbread. By day two, the gingerbread had been savaged. Quietly and neatly, with a knife. But there was little left.
By the third day out of seclusion, he started to make conversation again. He was wearing the same costume he'd had on since his return: flannel pyjamas and a sweatshirt. Whatever torments he'd endured in the attic to flush the booze from his system had seemed to do him a world of good. His eyes were brighter and he wasn't muttering and mumbling to himself.
He looked rather longingly at the cookpots and stovetop and said, "Thinking of going shopping anytime soon? Because I'd sure like to cook a meal for those boys. I sure would."
"You'd have to get dressed," I noted, and he practically leapt up from his chair, almost shedding his garments as he did so.
"I'll get changed and get some pants on and we can go buy some MEAT," he said. "We could get pork, and chicken, and pork, and meat, and maybe some beef and some things like that. OH, and some fresh vegetables, maybe like asparagus? And maybe some HERBS? I'll be ready in five minutes."
But gingerbread is tasty!
He clearly hadn't eaten anything other than gingerbread in days. So there we went off to the A&P, the closest local grocery store, which is staffed by octogenarians and patronized by other octogenarians. All of them are waving coupons and squawking to "Hector" or "Agnes" to come over to the register to verify a 45-year-old's ID. Things move slowly around there. I once likened the experience to being pecked to death by an aged duck.
Manny moved rapidly through the aisles, a new spring to his step. He prodded at avocados and rejected grapefruit that I would have happily tossed in my cart. He never even glanced at the junk food aisles. While in the produce section, he seemed more contented than he had ever been. He picked up herbs and sniffed at them. He fondled the rutabagas. More fresh items went into the cart: flip, flip, flip.
He really got going in the meat section. Some meat wasn't worthy of his attention. He really examined it, with the true cook's appreciation for a fine cut. He also squinted at the prices.
Meat makes the former drunk very happy.
"This is a good deal," he announced, tossing a family pack of meat into the cart. He picked chicken, pork, beef. He got more excited as we rolled down the aisles. He started blathering about grains and eggs and all sorts of food. He also grabbed a giant-sized bottle of Aleve and a lump of cured meat and a jar of caviar.
We checked out and loaded it home and he went to work, slicing and dicing and flipping things in his precious wok, which hung on our wall when not in use. The results were phenomenal. The boys gave me a little squint-eye as if to say, "Hey, thanks for the NUGGETS while he was gone. That was really great, mom, those frozen NUGGETS."
"You know what I wanna do?" he said. "I think I ought to start a catering business. I could do well at that. I really could, Miss Jennifer! I could sell good food to a lot of people around here who just want to eat! And I could cater their parties and such. And then, oh, I want to start a cooking show with Eldest son! He wants to learn to cook. I can teach him. I'll set up a video camera right here and then, we'll cook, we'll cook! And we can show how it's done, right here!"
So the days went on and the wok sizzled and the boys ate and ate and the Manny beamed. And then one day he went for a walk. And when he came back he accidentally left on the kitchen table a liquor store receipt for an expensive bottle of bourbon.
This stuff.
He saw me glancing at the receipt and he snatched it up fast as blazes and stuffed it into the garbage can. (Which was a dumb move, really, when one has pockets available.) Then he realized his error and hung about like a rabbit on hot cinders waiting for me to leave the kitchen so he could get the receipt out and destroy it. He kept walking out and coming back and shuffling about the downstairs, huffing and sighing.
But I didn't leave the kitchen, not until he went upstairs. Then I snatched the receipt out and took a photo of it. Then I took the garbage bag out of the can and left it by the back door.
He appeared in the doorway moments later, and his gaze went straight to the garbage bag leaning there against the cabinets.
"I'll take that out for you!" he said. "I'll sure take that out for you right now get it out of your way get it out of the kitchen yeah yeah I'd be happy to."
"You do that," I said. And he shot toward it like a man possessed.
I thought I smelled the stink of bourbon. And I knew that our world was unsteadily tipping, veering toward its next conclusion.
A suicidal young man. Australian researchers unveiled on Tuesday a Twitter tool to map moods around the world in real-time to help improve the allocation of mental health services. PHOTO/FILE 
