Teen depression can be described as a disorder with chronic gloominess, despondency and dejection which affect a teen’s life.

People fail to properly understand the effects of teen depression. The teens face a lot of challenges which are different from others. Generally speaking, majority of teenagers still depend on their parents or guardians for support and care. Even a small snub or a disapproving stance of elders makes them feel slighted and insulted. They delicately balance these setbacks with characteristic enthusiasm and energy in their social circles. They try and adjust to these situations early in life. But, sometimes it becomes too much for their mental makeup and they flare up and rebel. Their pent up frustrations and anguish reflect on their general disposition. They become gloomy, despondent and dejected. These very conditions make them stressful. Such situations are recipe for teen depression.

Causes of Teen Depression

Family Susceptibility: If a person’s family has an established tendency to get depression, then the person is more likely to get the illness. It is an established fact that genetics play a larger role in teen depression. If a parent has depressive disorder, then the siblings are three times more prone to get depression as compared with children whose parents do not have the illness.

The risk is even greater when both the parents suffer from depression. It may even be that that both the depressed parents may actually create a compulsive situation at home for the child to become depressive, even though that child may not carry any genetic material that causes depression.

Personality Traits: Every teenager, like any other people, has a set approach to perceive things and situations that happen in his/her life. These personality traits are ingrained in their persona. Teenagers may have a pessimistic aspect in their thinking. Or they may develop pessimistic tendencies over time. For such a teenager, the outlook will be gloomy and adverse. This adverse situation turns to negativity in people. A negative thinking person will be irrational in approach. Such a person will become self-critical and believes that an adverse occurrence is but a part of larger catastrophe that will visit him/her forever.

Such persons consider every positive occurrence in a negative way. They refuse to attribute any success to themselves and think that such successes are chance occurrences. Even when they perceive positive things, they attribute to others.

There is an indication that kids and youngsters, who had undergone depression before, may learn to recognize things and events in this negative and passive way when they are under depression again. This makes them to react in a similar fashion to similar happenings and circumstances. Such people are more vulnerable to undergo continued depression.

Such type of negative thinking may also lead to despair and dejection. Their self-confidence will suffer. They will be disoriented and they drift aimlessly. Such people develop suicidal inclinations.

Children under the age of five are not known to develop pessimistic thinking. This could explain rare occurrence of depression in children.

Gender Causes: The depressive episodes are found to be more prevalent in girls than boys. The rationale for this notion could be due to the fact that girls interact more with other people, are more reliant on healthy social bonds, and more prone to breakages in such bonds than boys. This would enhance their susceptibility to the stresses that are usual in teenagers.

Girls do not manage stress with self-pity and denial as in the case of boys. Instead, they resort to focused and sustained thinking about an event. This makes them more vulnerable. The high incidence of depression in teenage girls could be due to this higher vulnerability, coupled with the approach they tend to adapt in coping with depression, which is different from that of the boys.

Stress Causes: Stress plays a definitive role in getting depression. In teenagers, it is more complicated because their life is in fast developing stage and they are in transition to reach adulthood. Their necessities and susceptibilities are more complex. They develop and break relationship fast and their expectations with new relationships will keep increasing. A stage comes when they become frustrated with life and relationships. Environment at home affects teenagers very much. Parental relations, family conflicts, death of loved ones, financial matters, social standing, etc., factors cause great stress to them.