Hello, I was to complete an 8-10 page paper about teenage depression and anxiety as well as its common factors and solutions. Could you highlight my areas of weakness?
Depression and anxiety in teenagers have significantly risen within the last ten years. Surging and contributing from popular teenage outlets, this outbreak of depression is raising concerns for teen's mental health. This paper will aim to shed light on as well as argue that the rise of depression and anxiety is linked to modern influences from the youth's daily lives.
Young students and teenagers everywhere are reporting depression to surveys. Michael Daly, a psychologist with the Journal of Adolescent Health, studied the prevalence of depression using the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Of the 167,783 adolescents surveyed aged between 12-17, an increase from 8.1% in 2009 to 15.8% in 2019 were reported having experienced depression.
Research from the National Institutes of Health dictate 1 in 3 of all adolescents between 13-18 will experience an anxiety disorder. This rise of anxiety is often under looked and puts these adolescents into a feeling of loneliness, unsure of where to find support. When asked if students felt overwhelmed in 2016, 41% said yes compared to 2000's 28%. Anxiety is harmful for any juvenile, as a constant crushing fear while experiencing their adolescence can impair mental clarity and shift focuses, or decline into further mental health conditions.
One leading factor in both depression and anxiety cases is social media. Excessive unmonitored use of social media is extremely unhealthy, especially in recent times. The rise of social media brings unrealistic settings and intangible situations to life as trends, supporting youth interaction, filling a false realistic viewpoint to viewer's attention. According to a study from the Pew Research Center, 95% of teens have access to a smartphone, with 45% admitting that they spend a large amount of time online.
With most tech companies allowing their users to freely post, moderation becomes hazy and reveals unhealthy content. Social media is an online source of information, connection making, and other pieces of digital media. However, the communities that revolve around these topics online especially as of recently push an unconventional level of relatability, leaving those who don't relate excluded and down talked by that community. Social media exists as of recent to spread negativity and hateful standpoints against things they don't agree with, raising a culture of hate and discomfort in one's personal hobbies.
Social media works to spread discomforting content and opinions against the health of those struggling. Platforms like TikTok, and Instagram are often used to compare and invalidate trauma from others, belittling sensitive areas around adolescents, leaving them with the mentality that their problems are invalid as other problems are more important.
Overall, social media requires more attention towards the youth on their platforms, as youth primarily run the platforms. To highlight just how unmoderated and disgusting these companies can be to adolescents and children on their platform, Roblox, a leading social media/ video game company, has recently banned members from moderating their community, finding online predators and criminals who prey on the app, defending the predators. Tech companies must work harder to reduce the risk of unhealthy content to the youth and should prioritize safety for all youth on the app.
Following the leading factor for anxiety and depression, academic pressure often drops a heavy load of depression or anxiety onto underperforming and stuck students. Overloaded schedules lead to a scholastic burnout, finding that their early years are entirely revolving around a gradebook. Students often find themselves in a hole, desperate for help, but refuse to search for it themselves. Scholastic faculty often takes social cues into play to determine if a student could use a push but occasionally disregard the student who keeps to himself.
Assignments and topics that demand a great source of gumption to complete often leave students burnt out. Students search for a goal at the end of the assignment and a purpose that it served, prioritizing their personal gain over the scholastic process. When education faculty does not directly link these learning topics to real world problem solving, or usefulness outside of the class, students often find themselves drained, working only for a grade, sourcing anxiety.
Within classes, competitiveness is built around the completion of assignments. Students who aren't comfortable with their own ability or knowledge in the class feel left behind or left out, creating a space of discomfort. Anxiety and depression are often built off the already struggling students, why create a difficult space where those comfortable in their work are glorified while those who fall behind are left out? To improve these conditions, teachers and tutors must grow to be more personal with their class, studying their students and how they perceive information.
Away from all this, however, lies the main target for solution for most adolescents. Immediate and distant family alike are often imposed into having experience within these events. Adolescents and youth alike reach their families for support, which could be a turning point for success or the complete opposite. With families believing in their own source of depression and anxiety, without the modern viewpoint, youth and adolescents are often disregarded by their parents, leaving themselves to find their own output or help through external sources. Teenagers should never feel alone in times of need, especially when something so mentally constraining can block personal performance throughout the course of years.
Through this disregard of personal psychological disorders, unhealthy habits form. Addiction to abusable substances, self-harm, self-sabotaging, self-isolation, etc. studies from the National Library of Medicine have found that stress induced patients swell into depressive disorders, lacking large amounts of dopamine, feeling devaluation sensitivity, ultimately shaping these adolescents to fear support and search for personal outlets that relieve temporary and in the moment stress.
It's important to highlight these unfortunate situations for adolescents. Teachers, parents, therapists, and mental health professionals everywhere except for those who work to excel, I believe underperform for their youth. With so many misdiagnoses for ADHD, OCD, PSTD, and dyslexia, students with serious niche issues are often labeled as an odd sheep out of the flock and sent on their way. A vast number of disorders are shared between these mental effects, which allows screeners to mislabel them either accidentally or for personal productivity rate. It is vital these conditions are further studied and diagnosed properly to lower the rate of misdiagnosed treatment.
Those who are misdiagnosed are usually then dependent on a form of medication that may not help in the slightest for them but impacts the prescription holder negatively. Prescriptions often assigned to conclude a case include methylphenidate, benzodiazepines, alprazolam, lorazepam, Adderall, and clonazepam just to name a few. These drugs develop dependency and are often used to stimulate parts of the body and brain that have been numbed away from stress and anxiety or other trauma.
As these drugs surge and streamline themselves into a primary cure for mental health cures, misdiagnosed cases climb, with Worldmetrics reporting the "Misdiagnosis of mental health conditions occurs in about 25-50% of cases" (Misdiagnosed mental illness statistics).
The awareness around these topics last of all, is most important. Through my personal occurrences and my colleagues, I have experienced firsthand disregard of all the information on this page. Traditional solvents cannot keep up in a world with modern sources of depression and anxiety. To what these disconnected parents and teachers believe is attention-seeking or rise of laziness, is an outbreak of mental health that is not closely monitored. Children and adolescents today are raised by digital media, trust in mental health support systems, and relatability within their colleagues. When these communities are unmonitored, multiplication of present issues tend to frequently occur.
Spreading awareness is key to solving these cases and bringing forth more common knowledge about these issues. Anyone who has personally experienced firsthand any issue listed in this paper is the most aware of these issues, while those who study and work to resolve these issues fall behind with the cross of mental health issues between one subject and another.
These modern factors, as stated earlier, attribute themselves to adolescents' everyday portrait of life and are constantly molding envious and unrealistic realities for adolescents. Misdiagnoses, academic mental misjudgments, family disregard, and social media should all be directly addressed in searching for a solution in these cases. A priority to mental health and adolescent mental stability should be applied to everyone's knowledge. Together, through researchers and victims, a tangible future with a vast understanding of solutions for each mental health strain would not be far off as information maintains steadily spreading.
Works Cited
Depression and anxiety in teenagers have significantly risen within the last ten years. Surging and contributing from popular teenage outlets, this outbreak of depression is raising concerns for teen's mental health. This paper will aim to shed light on as well as argue that the rise of depression and anxiety is linked to modern influences from the youth's daily lives.
Young students and teenagers everywhere are reporting depression to surveys. Michael Daly, a psychologist with the Journal of Adolescent Health, studied the prevalence of depression using the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Of the 167,783 adolescents surveyed aged between 12-17, an increase from 8.1% in 2009 to 15.8% in 2019 were reported having experienced depression.
Research from the National Institutes of Health dictate 1 in 3 of all adolescents between 13-18 will experience an anxiety disorder. This rise of anxiety is often under looked and puts these adolescents into a feeling of loneliness, unsure of where to find support. When asked if students felt overwhelmed in 2016, 41% said yes compared to 2000's 28%. Anxiety is harmful for any juvenile, as a constant crushing fear while experiencing their adolescence can impair mental clarity and shift focuses, or decline into further mental health conditions.
One leading factor in both depression and anxiety cases is social media. Excessive unmonitored use of social media is extremely unhealthy, especially in recent times. The rise of social media brings unrealistic settings and intangible situations to life as trends, supporting youth interaction, filling a false realistic viewpoint to viewer's attention. According to a study from the Pew Research Center, 95% of teens have access to a smartphone, with 45% admitting that they spend a large amount of time online.
With most tech companies allowing their users to freely post, moderation becomes hazy and reveals unhealthy content. Social media is an online source of information, connection making, and other pieces of digital media. However, the communities that revolve around these topics online especially as of recently push an unconventional level of relatability, leaving those who don't relate excluded and down talked by that community. Social media exists as of recent to spread negativity and hateful standpoints against things they don't agree with, raising a culture of hate and discomfort in one's personal hobbies.
Social media works to spread discomforting content and opinions against the health of those struggling. Platforms like TikTok, and Instagram are often used to compare and invalidate trauma from others, belittling sensitive areas around adolescents, leaving them with the mentality that their problems are invalid as other problems are more important.
Overall, social media requires more attention towards the youth on their platforms, as youth primarily run the platforms. To highlight just how unmoderated and disgusting these companies can be to adolescents and children on their platform, Roblox, a leading social media/ video game company, has recently banned members from moderating their community, finding online predators and criminals who prey on the app, defending the predators. Tech companies must work harder to reduce the risk of unhealthy content to the youth and should prioritize safety for all youth on the app.
Following the leading factor for anxiety and depression, academic pressure often drops a heavy load of depression or anxiety onto underperforming and stuck students. Overloaded schedules lead to a scholastic burnout, finding that their early years are entirely revolving around a gradebook. Students often find themselves in a hole, desperate for help, but refuse to search for it themselves. Scholastic faculty often takes social cues into play to determine if a student could use a push but occasionally disregard the student who keeps to himself.
Assignments and topics that demand a great source of gumption to complete often leave students burnt out. Students search for a goal at the end of the assignment and a purpose that it served, prioritizing their personal gain over the scholastic process. When education faculty does not directly link these learning topics to real world problem solving, or usefulness outside of the class, students often find themselves drained, working only for a grade, sourcing anxiety.
Within classes, competitiveness is built around the completion of assignments. Students who aren't comfortable with their own ability or knowledge in the class feel left behind or left out, creating a space of discomfort. Anxiety and depression are often built off the already struggling students, why create a difficult space where those comfortable in their work are glorified while those who fall behind are left out? To improve these conditions, teachers and tutors must grow to be more personal with their class, studying their students and how they perceive information.
Away from all this, however, lies the main target for solution for most adolescents. Immediate and distant family alike are often imposed into having experience within these events. Adolescents and youth alike reach their families for support, which could be a turning point for success or the complete opposite. With families believing in their own source of depression and anxiety, without the modern viewpoint, youth and adolescents are often disregarded by their parents, leaving themselves to find their own output or help through external sources. Teenagers should never feel alone in times of need, especially when something so mentally constraining can block personal performance throughout the course of years.
Through this disregard of personal psychological disorders, unhealthy habits form. Addiction to abusable substances, self-harm, self-sabotaging, self-isolation, etc. studies from the National Library of Medicine have found that stress induced patients swell into depressive disorders, lacking large amounts of dopamine, feeling devaluation sensitivity, ultimately shaping these adolescents to fear support and search for personal outlets that relieve temporary and in the moment stress.
It's important to highlight these unfortunate situations for adolescents. Teachers, parents, therapists, and mental health professionals everywhere except for those who work to excel, I believe underperform for their youth. With so many misdiagnoses for ADHD, OCD, PSTD, and dyslexia, students with serious niche issues are often labeled as an odd sheep out of the flock and sent on their way. A vast number of disorders are shared between these mental effects, which allows screeners to mislabel them either accidentally or for personal productivity rate. It is vital these conditions are further studied and diagnosed properly to lower the rate of misdiagnosed treatment.
Those who are misdiagnosed are usually then dependent on a form of medication that may not help in the slightest for them but impacts the prescription holder negatively. Prescriptions often assigned to conclude a case include methylphenidate, benzodiazepines, alprazolam, lorazepam, Adderall, and clonazepam just to name a few. These drugs develop dependency and are often used to stimulate parts of the body and brain that have been numbed away from stress and anxiety or other trauma.
As these drugs surge and streamline themselves into a primary cure for mental health cures, misdiagnosed cases climb, with Worldmetrics reporting the "Misdiagnosis of mental health conditions occurs in about 25-50% of cases" (Misdiagnosed mental illness statistics).
The awareness around these topics last of all, is most important. Through my personal occurrences and my colleagues, I have experienced firsthand disregard of all the information on this page. Traditional solvents cannot keep up in a world with modern sources of depression and anxiety. To what these disconnected parents and teachers believe is attention-seeking or rise of laziness, is an outbreak of mental health that is not closely monitored. Children and adolescents today are raised by digital media, trust in mental health support systems, and relatability within their colleagues. When these communities are unmonitored, multiplication of present issues tend to frequently occur.
Spreading awareness is key to solving these cases and bringing forth more common knowledge about these issues. Anyone who has personally experienced firsthand any issue listed in this paper is the most aware of these issues, while those who study and work to resolve these issues fall behind with the cross of mental health issues between one subject and another.
These modern factors, as stated earlier, attribute themselves to adolescents' everyday portrait of life and are constantly molding envious and unrealistic realities for adolescents. Misdiagnoses, academic mental misjudgments, family disregard, and social media should all be directly addressed in searching for a solution in these cases. A priority to mental health and adolescent mental stability should be applied to everyone's knowledge. Together, through researchers and victims, a tangible future with a vast understanding of solutions for each mental health strain would not be far off as information maintains steadily spreading.
Works Cited
