Depression: Teens

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. And I'm Lori Miller.

Welcome to the Salvation Army's Wonderful Words of Life. Well, welcome back everybody. It's officially the last week of September and welcome back to Lori Miller.

Yes, thank you. Are you having fun? I'm having a good time. This week we'll be discussing depression among teens and we'll also be joined by another counselor who works alongside the Salvation Army, Marcy Camarillo. Lori had the chance to sit down with her and discuss this very topic and offer some powerful advice to parents. Hey guys, we are here today continuing on with our mental health series and we are talking to Marcy Camarillo who I'm enjoying getting to know. So, welcome. Thank you.

I'm glad to be here. We just want to take a minute to get to know who you are and where you're from and what your background is. So, can you share with us a little bit? Sure.

I live in northwest Arkansas. I have spent time in full-time ministry. My husband and I were Salvation Army officers for 14 years and it definitely benefits what I do today. Definitely. So you say what you do today.

Yes. So that's perfect because tell us, what do you do today? So I'm a mental health counselor. I'm also a play therapist and I'm licensed to supervise the new counselors and those in training for play therapy. So I do numerous trainings. So you're a busy woman. It's busy.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad to hear all of that because you come to us right at the perfect time because we're really enjoying this series on mental health and I think it's really, really important. And it's so nice to get a perspective from a professional who's been connected in some way to the church as well. So I know that today we really kind of wanted to start or really dig into the mental health of adolescents and teenagers. I'm wondering, I know it's difficult sometimes to gauge what is normal hormonal adolescence versus actual depression. So when I interview parents, I'm trying to get a baseline of what the last normal was and then discuss the changes that have occurred. So with depression, if we're seeing symptoms that have lasted more than a few weeks, then we're starting to consider, okay, this may be something related to their mental health and not to their attitude.

So that's part of the difference. Having an attitude that parents don't like or teachers don't like, that's not necessarily depression. That could be that they're learning about themselves and learning about the world. If children or adolescents display symptoms that are a little bit more troubling, their conversations change, they withdraw, they may appear to pull back from interests that they had before.

Eating may change, sleeping may change. That's when adults need to be concerned about that and checking on them. I'm curious about the connection between parental mental health and the mental health of children and adolescents.

Is there a connection there? So I would say that parent mental health sets the stage for the child's good mental health, so good, strong mental health. Now, it is on a continuum.

It's on a continuum because we all have had seasons of rises and falls in our mental health, just like anything else. If we can have conversations at home or in the church with our own children about, yes, this is life, you know, it's okay, it's normal to experience deep sadness in life because, you know, look at Scripture. The conversation has to be there.

Yeah, I think so. It needs to be there. You know, have good, normal, honest, deep conversations with one another. I think maybe when we do that as adults and as leaders in particular, then we're modeling for adolescents that it's okay to be broken, that God works through brokenness, God works through broken people. It's all over Scripture. Oh, absolutely.

I'm reminded of the Old Testament Scripture that says, morning lasts for the night, but joy comes in the morning. That's right. People struggle, and it's absolutely okay to do so.

That's right. That's where God meets us. Totally agree. And I think also the redemption of your pain and your stories by sharing that and it creates connection with other people, you know, to remove that stigma. Secrets keep us stuck and sick. And so being able to incorporate one's experience into a narrative, into a story, there's nothing that we have experienced that the Lord cannot touch and be present in. I so often feel the Spirit of God in the counseling room. You know, it feels like a holy place many times. And I know that I sit in the sacred chair as I listen to the stories of others. We are people of transformation.

That's right. We can be transformed into who God wants us to be in the here and now, not perfect, but healed, or in the process of healing. We are overcomers. We are. We can do that. And also, just keep thinking to myself that conversation builds connection, connection builds community.

Yes. And so I love that idea. I've enjoyed my conversation with you. Oh, thank you so much. It's an honor.

It's been so much fun. If you want to hear an extended version of my conversation with Marcy today, you can go to salvationarmysongcast.org. This week, we're going to talk about mental health, particularly among teens.

And talk to us, why is this a passion of yours? For instance, just like we were talking in the last segment, we created a group within our church that focuses on teen girls specifically. And I think it birthed out of just the societal pressures of having to be a teen of a particular size, weight, height, socio-acceptability.

And we created the group in terms to help try to eradicate some of those things. We started to notice more and more of them speaking about depressive episodes, feeling lonely, even though I'm standing in a group of my family and my friends, wanting to isolate themselves. And so even though it started out as a way to build confidence in girls, it really morphed into a discussion about mental health and how do we know the difference, again, between sadness and episodes of depression.

How not to isolate yourself and how to identify that I am not alone going in these things. And so when we talk about depression, in teens, we're really looking at the age between 12 and 18. In today's society, we've got boys and girls, teenagers, that in my brain are always faced with the image crisis, having to look good and keep up with the Joneses. Is that a real thing or is that a perception of mine?

No, it's actually a real thing. 30% of all teens will experience some episode of depression as they matriculate through school. Even now, the American Pediatric Association has started to give children age 10 and up or 12 and up.

They started to give a depression inventory when they come in for their annual physicals. And so it's something that we've seen a need for, particularly because, as you just noted, they are the pressure to maintain, the pressure to identify with a particular group or not identify a particular group within the school system and outside of the school system. It's just putting so much more pressure on our children. They have much more things to deal with than perhaps you and I did when we went through school. We have bullying. We have sexuality, concerns around sexuality. We have not being popular. We also have groups down to what's your dress code like?

Do you have the latest iPhone or are you still of the Android system? So all of those things are really creeping up on our children and it's causing them to have these thoughts and conversations amongst themselves. And they're not reaching externally outside of themselves to even just do a litmus test to see if their thoughts are real with that. So we've seen a steady increase in depression with children and sometimes, as I talked about those particular symptoms that we should be looking for, while we see them more readily in adults and teens, they're a little bit more subtle. And they're subtle because for sometimes us as parents, we think, oh, you know, as teenagers, we went through various things and we're just thinking now it's their time. But we're in a different society and so we should really kind of pull back from that knowledge or that thought base, if that's what you have, that my child is just going through the normal existence and experiences of a regular teenager. Because today, those existence, we have children who are cutting themselves to relieve pressure, who are seriously thinking about harming themselves, they might not have a plan, but the thoughts of suicide are there. And we've seen people who've made pacts over particular things and so we really don't want to just leave kids to their own, and I hate to say demise, but that's really the trajectory that it kind of goes, is that if we leave them to their own thinking, we really need to kind of come back as a family and really see what are they thinking. Because as I said, 30% of all teens are affected by depression and so it might not be your child, but it might be your child's friends. And sometimes friends have more influence on who they are or who they're becoming than parents. I think, too, one of the things that Aliada said in an earlier episode of the show was they put their devices down in their household at 7 o'clock and just make sure that things like homework are getting done or that there's interaction and being present. I think that's got to be so important, particularly in a teen's life, having someone who's present in their life so that they can maybe process those thoughts that they've had, which, by the way, can be perfectly natural.

You have an imagination that God gave us. You can think about those things. The difference is how we act on those things and I think that's where we really get to a stable mental health sort of place. And sometimes just talking it out, getting it in the open.

And if you're not present, if you don't have someone to talk to, that can lead to bigger problems. Aliada, I'm glad you're here. We're glad that you're here because you're helping us learn more about something that's so important in our society today, mental health. And so we hope that if you haven't seen the other episodes or listened to them on our podcast on this particular show, that you'll go back and check them out. You can join us in the weeks to come. God bless you. Or write us at P.O.

Box 29972, Atlanta, Georgia, 30359. When you contact us, we'll send you our gift for this series. It's totally free for listeners like you, one per household while supplies last. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes or your favorite podcast store and be sure to give us a rating. Just search for Wonderful Words of Life. Follow us on social media for the latest episodes, extended interviews and more. And if you don't have a church home, we invite you to visit your local Salvation Army worship center. They'll be glad to see you. This is Bernie Dake inviting you to join us next time for the Salvation Army's Wonderful Words of Life. Music.