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Chris Scott

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What can we do about the constant rise of depression and suicide in young adults?

I am seventeen years of age and have recently come out of a large stage of my life where I dealt with a lot of depression. I have dealt with and still deal with people in high school (and even middle school in some cases) that deal with depression every single day and never have anyone that they talk to about their problems.

I have known people that have committed suicide from the weight of depression upon their shoulders throughout their lives, and have heard about these cases all over the world. I, myself, have been driven to the point where I thought that the only way out of my depression was by suicide because there was nothing to help me.

I want to know your opinions and ideas on the subject of depression and suicide in young adults today and what we can do to prevent these problems in the future. Thanks for listening!

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Topics: Teenagers depression help the children psychology suicide
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  • M ER

    • 0
    Oct 19 2011: Me and my friends that are battling with this also feel that the depression can stem from what we describe as "disconnection from reality". Young people today are simply pushed too hard from all directions. We rarely have time for ourselves. We are forced to school where we get such a workload that very few of us can make any time for anything else unless we skive off some of the work and even when we manage to make time we spend it on other activities that are riddled with information like meeting friends, watching TV, reading books, commenting on pages on the interned ... etc. There is no time to just sit down and pay attention to ourselves, to feel everything around us and everything within us. I think the reason depression has risen so much in comparison to the past is because we are over-stimulated from every angle and we no longer know how to escape. We think we are relaxing when we are, for example, just sitting on the sofa, watching TV, but though we may not exactly be "doing" anything it is still stimulating us. We just need to lear to slow down before we acquire ADD and become unable to. I find that after sitting around doing nothing, and not thinking too much and definitely not negative thoughts, I feel noticeably better and calmer for even two days afterwards. The problem is finding the time.

    • Mark Meijer 100+

      • 0
      HostAssociate
      Oct 19 2011: "There is no time to just sit down and pay attention to ourselves, to feel everything around us and everything within us."

      I'm so glad you said this, Maria. This was basically my whole advice on your other post.

      There is time to do just that, it's not going anywhere. But you can't have time if you don't take time. I'm sure there's some time you can take away from TV, even just a little bit during commercials. Turn off the sound or preferably the whole thing. Or if you can't, leave the room. Take an extended bathroom break. Who cares :P.

      Also, when you're meeting with friends, or just walking down the street, or eating, brushing your teeth, going to bed, even while typing in TED comments... You can pay attention to yourself while doing all those things! Just pepper your day with brief moments like that. If it helps, close your eyes for a second and just feel how your body is breathing.

      And don't do it with an intention to find calm. You may or may not find calm, but you already know you can't force it, and trying to force it will work counterproductively. So whether you're calm or not, pay attention to whatever way it is, not whatever way you want it to be. Those are just more thoughts.

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