KARACHI, Aug 27: Teen depression is an agonising problem affecting both youth and parents. Experts say that approximately 4 out of 100 teenagers get seriously depressed each year. However, good news is that it is curable. In fact, about 80 per cent of people who get help for their depression enjoy a better quality of life.

The basic need is that parents should realize the seriousness of this disease. Unfortunately, at times when parents see resistant, belligerent, or hostile behaviour from a teenaged child, they automatically assume this is normal rebellion. Sometimes there is a deeper problem that can be treated by mental health experts.

Depression in adolescents can express itself as irritability, hostility, and anger, which can often lead to be misdiagnosed. More teen suicide cases are reported as compared to past. The saddest part is that in most cases of teen suicides, parents, teachers, and friends did not realise the child had a serious clinical depression that required therapeutic and medical intervention.

Most people with depression can be helped with counselling, provided by a professional psychologist, and some are helped with counselling and medicine. Counselling, or psychotherapy, means talking about feelings with a trained psychologist who can help the patient change the relationships, thoughts, or behaviours that are causing the depression. The patient needs to talk to someone who can help you get out of that rut!Medicine is used to treat depression that is severe or disabling. When depression is so bad that the patient cannot focus on anything else, when it interferes with his life in an overwhelming way, medication might be necessary, in addition to counselling. But most often, counselling alone is sufficient. With treatment, most depressed people start to feel better in just a few weeks.

There is no single cause for depression. Many factors play a role including genetics, environment, medical conditions, life events, and certain thinking patterns that affect a person's reaction to events. Research has revealed that depression runs in families and suggests that some people inherit genes that make it more likely for them to get depressed. But not everyone who has the genetic makeup for depression actually gets depression. And many people who have no family history of depression have the condition. So, although genes are one factor, they are not the single cause of depression.

For some people, depression can be intense and occur in bouts that last for weeks. For others, depression can be less severe but can linger at a low level for years.

Depression doesn't make a person “crazy.” Just as things can go wrong in all other organs of the body, things can go wrong in the most important organ of all: the brain.—PPI