Again… Forever to get this one up. I hope it’s not an overload posting them both within ten minutes of each other on one night, but a girl’s gotta do stuff when she remembers to do it.
Hope you guys enjoy!
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Differences in Depression: A look at adolescent and adult onset depression
In seventh grade, I went through a very tough time. I developed schizophrenia, and along with that, depression. My depression got so bad that at one point I spent all day writing a note that I was semi-considering turning into a suicide note. That night, I cut it up and stored the pieces in a bag and put the bag in a safe place so I would always remember what I should not do in the future. A few years later, after I started antidepressants, I went back to the bag and taped the note back together. I saw how depressed I was then, but thinking back I realized I did not have the classic signs adults show with depression. I could still do well in school, which was my work. I could still function daily. I could still spend time with my friends, even if I did shut myself in my room for hours on end during the weekends and weeknights. For the longest time, everyone but me considered me to be a stereotypically moody, angry, and angst-filled preteen/teenager. My difference compared to what I knew about depression then made me ponder the difference between adolescent and adult depression. Today I am back on antidepressants and am finding differences between what I experienced as an adolescent and what I am now experiencing as a young adult. I have been much less motivated and have found getting out of the house on my own hard. I have become very dependent on other people to persuade me to achieve what I need to do. Yet again, I find myself comparing the differences in depression based on at what age a person develops it. I think that this paper can help people see the warning signs of depression and realize that depression can manifest itself in different ways. What is a textbook case of adolescent depression? What does a normal case of depression look like in an adult? How are the two the same and how are they different? What are some cures of depression?
Children and teenagers with depression often continue to perform daily tasks, but have difficulties finding joy in such things. Signs an adolescent is depressed include pretending to be sick in order to avoid school, sulking, negativity and irritability, and getting in trouble at school. However, these signs are seen in many adolescents with and without depression, thus making adolescent depression hard to diagnose. Female adolescents are twice as likely to suffer from depression than males. Adolescents with depression are more likely to, even if treated, suffer depression in adulthood (Hendrix, 2011). 50-70% of adolescents with depression have a recurrent episode within five years (Gledhill, & Hodes, 2011). They also have a higher risk of substance abuse, suicide (with more males achieving and more females attempting), anxiety, and eating disorders (Hendrix, 2011). Adolescent depression is a concern that often cannot be prevented; however, there are treatments to help cure it.
Different ways to treat adolescent depression are cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, family therapy, and pharmacotherapy. Cognitive-behavioral therapy includes monitoring one’s thoughts and feelings through a journal, scheduling activities, and learning how to deal with cognitive and emotional challenges through psycho-education. Interpersonal psychotherapy seeks to solve role transitions, grief, and interpersonal role disputes and deficits. One issue with interpersonal psychotherapy is that it has only been shown to help with mild and moderate depression. Family therapy involves the entire family in solving problems that could be aiding the depression and hindering recovery. Those hindrances could be anything from parental conflict to the parents misunderstanding the adolescent to suicidal ideation. Pharmacotherapy involves the use of medicine, often antidepressants, to help readjust the chemicals in the brain that are causing the depression. Pharmacotherapy is also helpful for adolescents facing comorbidity, in which the patients are suffering from two or more mental illnesses at the same time. A concern with this therapy is the increased risk of suicidal ideation and self-harm in some teenagers taking antidepressants (Gledhill & Hodes, 2011). All of these methods are found to help reduce and possibly suffocate the symptoms of adolescent depression.
Adult depression manifests itself differently than adolescent depression. Adults with depression can often stop functioning and will stay in bed rather than face the day, which can cause them to lose their jobs. Men and women suffering from depression have different symptoms. Women are more likely to face depression than men, and often their depression is associated with hormonal changes due to either giving birth or experiencing severe premenstrual syndrome. Their symptoms include feeling worthless, sad, or excessively guilty. Men suffering from depression often turn to alcohol and drugs more than women. They are also more likely to become workaholics or engage in reckless activities. Men are more irritable, discouraged, and abusive when experiencing depression. As adults age, they develop depression with a concurrent medical issue, like a stroke, cancer, or heart disease. In the United States, men over the age of 85 have the highest suicide rate (Hendrix, 2011). Adults facing depression have four phases through which they often go: a preceding time of negative feelings, a realization that something is not right, a phase of reaching out to the professional medical community, and a final stage of accepting depression. The third and fourth phase often are incorporated with therapy, antidepressants, or a combination of the two (Westerbeek & Mutsaers, 2008; Hendrix, 2011).
Adult depression is most often treated by cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, or antidepressants, but can also be treated by electroconvulsive therapy. Antidepressants affect neurotransmitters within the brain, most often enhancing serotonin and norepinephrine. Sometimes doctors will prescribe two types of medicine: one a basic antidepressant and the other either a different class of antidepressant, a stimulant, or an anti-anxiety medication. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is generally only employed when other treatments have not worked. Despite its shaky history, ECT has improved greatly and often has no long-term side effects, with most disappearing after one year. The process of ECT involves putting a patient under anesthesia and administering a muscle relaxant. The patient then sleeps through the electric shocks and does not consciously feel them. ECT only lasts a few minutes and patients are often completely awake and alert within one hour (Hendrix, 2011). All of these treatments have been proved effective for at least one variation of depression.
Adolescents and adults have similarities and differences in how depression affects them and how it is treated. Both adolescents and adults lose joy in normally happy events. Women and adolescent females are more likely to suffer from depression, but less likely to succeed in committing suicide. In adolescent depression, males and females often have similar depression symptoms. In adult depression, symptoms are often manifested differently, based on gender. There are three types of treatments that are the same between adolescent and adult depression: cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, and pharmacotherapy. Adolescents gain more from family therapy than adults do, and are rarely subjected to ECT. The most important similarity is that depression is a serious mental illness that can impede a person’s ability to function normally.
I was surprised to see that family therapy was a treatment for adolescents facing depression. I knew family therapy was useful for helping solve familial problems and for helping blended families, but I did not realize that it could also help teenagers suffering from depression. I expected to see ECT on the list of adult depression treatments, but had never really known the process before. It was interesting to read about the different classes of antidepressants and how they interact with one another. I am currently on Lexapro and Wellbutrin, both of which were mentioned in my research as working well together. I did not realize that males 85 and older have the highest suicide rate in the United States. That shocked me a bit, because you always hear about young adult males committing suicide, but never elderly gentlemen. Now that I have done this, I have answered my question about how depression presents itself in various groups. It was interesting to see that both females and males exhibit a lot of the same symptoms in adolescence, but as the age at which one contracts depression increases, the symptoms vary more greatly by gender. The information I gained was very enlightening. I hope that I can use the information about comorbidity one day in my research. Overall, I expected a lot of what I read from my experiences and from my past research, but this was still a highly educational experience. I hope that anyone who reads this can gain a further understanding of how depression and depression treatments vary based on age, gender, severity, and whether or not there are any other mental health issues occurring. I believe that these facts will be very useful to other people one day.
References
Gledhill, J., & Hodes M. (2011). The treatment of adolescents with depression. Current Medical Literature: Psychiatry, 22(1), 1-7.
Hendrix, I. (2011). Depression: Symptoms, causes, and treatments. e-published: Amazon.
Westerbeek, J., & Mutsaers, K. (2008). Depression narratives: How the self became a problem. Literature & Medicine, 27(1), 25-55.
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Well, that was easy! I have express permission from Professor B. Archuleta to post this paper. Thanks and have a great day!
Life, love, and the stars above!
God bless!
Love from this *remember, there’s exciting news coming!* girl,
~me~
