What is depression? Have you ever suffered from it? Do you know someone who has? How can you tell? Almost 20 percent of all Americans have depression, most without knowing it. Many of these that suffer are children. Many people dont realize how common depression is among adolescents or how serious it can be.Depression is a disease that affects the psyche causing a person to act and react abnormally toward others as well as themselves. It is often thought of as excessive sadness when it is actually the inability to feel any emotion strongly. It has long been overlooked and under diagnosed. Because adolescence is already a time of emotional turmoil, mood swings, gloomy thoughts and heightened sensitivity, depression in adolescents has been greatly under diagnosed. Until recently, many physicians thought of depression as an adult disorder. In actuality, 7-14% of children will experience an episode of major depression before the age of 15. Brown (1996) stated, It was only in the 1980s that mood disorders in children were included in the category of diagnosed psychiatric illnesses. Brown (1996) has said the reason why depression is often over looked in children and adolescents is because "children are not always able to express how they feel." In a random sampling of 100,000 teenagers, two to three thousand will have mood disorders out of which 8-10 will commit suicide (Brown, 1996). Mood disorders are often accompanied by other psychological problems such as anxiety (Oster & Montgomery, 1996), eating disorders (Lasko et al., 1996), hyperactivity (Blackman, 1995), substance abuse (Blackman, 1995; Brown, 1996; Lasko et al., 1996; Oster & Montgomery, 1996) and suicide (Blackman, 1995; Brown, 1996; Lasko et al., 1996; Oster & Montgomery, 1996) all of which can hide depressive symptoms. Blackman (1995) stated that it is not uncommon for young people to be preoccupied with issues of mortality and to contemplate the effect their deat...
