"You and the World" Teen Depression

Posted by Jasmin Gilliam in English 1 - Dunn on

Many of us as teens have heard the stereotype that all we care about is what we look like who we talk to and what is going to happen next for us. Essentially the adults in the world put us in one big box labeled teenagers and let us fight for ourselves through the 3 years of middle school and the 4 years of high school. These seven years in our lives are the ones that shape and mold us. We are transitioning in our lives from children to adults. We also are experiencing many new things that stick with us for the rest of our lives. Whether it is good or bad it stays with you and affects you in some way. Sometimes it affects you in the short term and you make some decisions that aren't the best for you or the people around you. Those decisions are made based on many things that happen in these seven years or even earlier. The decision may also be based on depression and teen depression is a little special compared to other depressions.

The things that influence our decisions in life can be from something so small like someone telling you that they think you should do this or that to something as a person who is very close to you dying. The decisions make us the way we are and when you are depressed your mind isn't in the correct mindset for you to be making big decisions. If you are depressed and you are a teen it can make your decisions a little more rash than one of an adult. The Facts say that self harm is most common in Girls From ages 15 to 24. Thats is what makes it interesting though because if you just search Anything with self harm in teens the search automatically goes to teen depression in girls and those are all the suggestions too. One statistic on teen suicide, I found that is very interesting is that boys are 4x more likely to die from suicide than girls. However, the girls are more likely to attempt suicide. So the boys are more likely to complete a “successful” suicide than girls but the girls attempt more times than the guys.

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Screen Shot 2012-11-20 at 9.45.14 AM

Some numbers for you to see how big of a problem this is becoming are:


  1. 20% of teens will experience depression before adulthood
  2. teens with depression usually will suffer from more than one episode within 2 years (episode can last up to 8 months)
  3. 70% of the teens will have more than one episode before adulthood.
  4. Dysthymia is type of depression that 2% of teens will go through. This type of depression is mild but long lasting.
  5. 15% of the teens with depression will develop the bipolar disorder
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Screen Shot 2012-11-24 at 9.12.40 PM
One Girl who committed suicide one month after this video was posted. This is a subject that is very close to my heart because I saw so many of my friends go through some of the self harming decisions and I saw how much they were upset afterwards when they realized what they had done. I have always wanted to make people happy and I hate to see people sad and this you and the world project gives me the opportunity to put a smile on people's face and help them realize that they can be happy if they look at their situation from another point of view. Some effects of depression in teens are pretty extreme for many of the causes. some of the causes can make you have the effects of harming yourself in a way like you can cut yourself you can make yourself throw up or not eating hurting yourself in any way have consequences to the people around you. choices this big will always affect the people you love and who love you. I think that when us teen are thinking about these decisions we only think of what relief it will get us. I don't think we think of the consequences for those around us. I think we are bit naive in that way and we need a little guidence from our elders in that way.
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Screen Shot 2012-11-20 at 10.09.22 AM
​Things people need to survive; for a good life many teens need to know these things so they know how much they have and what they need so they can get those things and make themselves content.
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Comments (6)

Leo Levy (Student 2016)
Leo Levy

Very informative and you seem very invested in the topic. I think that your use of multimedia like the pyramid of needs really enriches the experience.

Michelle Friedman (Student 2016)
Michelle Friedman

Why is "From Girls" capitalized? It's in the second paragraph. The introduction is really great! Also, towards the end you are missing some capitalized words. But this is really interesting and you presented it really well! I enjoyed reading about this.

William Derry (Student 2016)
William Derry

I like your blog. I think it is very informative. I think this is an important issue for teens. The statistics that were shown were helpful. This was a great blog post.

Desmond O'Donovan (Student 2016)
Desmond O'Donovan

Being a teenager and learning that 20% of teens go through depression before adulthood was a little disturbing to me. It means that i have a 20% of being depressed. This was pretty interesting and relatable.