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in a teenager is depression more easily identifiable in how I feel or how I'm acting so I think that it's both but the
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sign for a parent is the behavior so if all of a sudden your teenager is not doing the usual activities is no longer
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interested in football is no longer a texting constantly with their friends is no longer interested in the food that
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they like before or their sleep pattern has changed dramatically or their attitude toward school has changed those
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are all red flags and I'm not talking about a day I'm talking about two weeks where a parent says there is something
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different now certainly if a child tells you a teenager says I feel miserable I feel like I wish I was dead that is
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something a parent has to act on I think that what all young adults and teenagers
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struggle with is impulse control and the intensity of their feelings and simultaneously loneliness because of
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that self-consciousness and so those kinds of impulsivity also affects the way they think so they freeze or they're
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boiling or they hate you or they love you there's no like there's no that warm disappears it's always boiling or
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freezes zero to 60 quickly right and in many ways they're like a Ferrari with bicycle breaks and so what you have to
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do with a teenager is wait them out you don't minimize them you don't say oh you're not freezing or it wasn't the
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worst day of your life today at school I mean that's silly you have to say you know things like how
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can I make it better or what was something that made you feel better at school today or can you tell me the
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worst thing maybe we can figure out a way to problem-solve once you make the diagnosis of depression the treatment
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choices we have are pretty impressive so if you have if you treat someone with cognitive behavioral therapy that's a
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kind of treatment that's 10 or 12 sessions a psychologist who's been trained in CBT knows how to use it and
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basically the way we feel is affected by the way we think which affects the way we behave and if you could break that
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cycle that's what CBT is all about and teaching someone that sometimes you have cognitive distortions that you think
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you're ugly or think you're unlikable and that's your depression tricking your brain if you do
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CBT for four weeks and the patient the teenager is not any better then the suggestion would be continue the CBT
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which is giving you tools and add medication and the medication you would add is something called an SSRI you know
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a prozac Zoloft one of those medicines that make serotonin more available in your brain
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here's the best news 71 percent of teenagers who have depression who get 12 weeks of CBT along with medication get
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better