Knives, guns, drugs, depression? What is the link between these? Answer.

They all
have the potential to inflict pain and harm to the human being? Suicide in North
America is the third leading cause of death among adolescents and is estimated by
the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) that 8 of every 100,000 teenagers
commit suicide and this is an increasing phenomena. It is believed that 90% of
those that attempted or committed suicide suffer from Depression or Schizophrenia.
I chose this topic of Teenage depression and suicide because it was of great mystery
to me how a seeming normal El Dorado East student took his own life in 2008
without much being know to friends and even family. I narrowed my investigation
into the topic in depression and two of its contributing factors: Hormonal changes
and High stress levels. The two factors were thoroughly researched and delivered by
two credible veteran psychology teacher and coach, Dr. Arch Hart and his daughter
Dr. Catherine Hart in their book Is your teen stressed or depressed. Dr. Nisha
Jackson, a practitioner of depression diagnostics in her book Surviving the teenage
hormone takeover was also used for sourcing of information. Not only are these
authors credible through profession but their books server great relevance to the
issues discussed.
Depression is twice more likely to affect girls in their mid to late teens as to boys in
the same age category however, as noted by Dr. Hart boys are more susceptible to
have more sporadic symptoms of depression because they tend to mask their
emotional depression by becoming over involved in activities or by withdrawing
from everything and with sulking in isolation. This he noted slowly affects the
mental of that individual to maintain sanity and most males act out violently,
seeking revenge and being overcome by thoughts of suicide. Dr. Hart unlike Dr.
Jackson links Depression in teens to both Hormonal changes or puberty as well as
high stress levels in the fast track world we now live in.
Both Doctors signalled high stress levels as the most likely cause of depression,
indentifying that the world a teenage developes in today is vastly different from
what it was 20 or 30 years ago. They
My speech today does not seek to bore you with scientific terms and data for the
past 10yrs on depression but I seek just to focus on the fact of making the realities
of Depression known, because depression hurts. Depression in teens from my
personal experience goes untreated and unrecognized because of the region wide
culture of poor psychology studies of not only the adults but youth as well. Research
is lacking in this particular area and it must urgently be address as I believe it seeks
to answer questions of lack of performance, sporadic behaviour and slow learning in
the school systems today.

My invested time for research took me into various realms of depression and I
began to owned this topic because there was not only relevancy to the academic
purpose but my personal life and experiences with friends.