Norman T. Berlinger - Rescuing Your Teenager from Depression

This book would have been impossible had not so many parents of depressed teens unashamedly stepped forward to tell of their insights, sorrows, and victories.

My son, forever of a generous heart, encouraged me to include his story in this book so that others might benefit from reading about his difficult journey.

The late Conrad Vachon, a distinguished and beloved English teacher at Notre Dame High School in Harper Woods, Michigan, was the first to convince me and many other of his students that the written word is a powerful medium, and that good writing is born of lots of reading (especially the essays of E. B. White). The talented and dedicated faculty at Northwestern Universitys Medill School of Journalism taught me how to be succinct and how to avoid word salads. When I was a new reporter at the Minneapolis StarTribune, Steve Marcus, the newspapers science and medicine editor, encouraged me to pursue a writing career. Coming from someone with such a vast experience and such a precise ear for language, his words lit the fire of enthusiasm and provided the major impetus for undertaking this book. I am indeed fortunate to count him as a colleague and friend. Faith Hamlin, my agent at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, wisely guided this book to the desk of HarperCollins editor Toni Sciarra, whose keen eye resulted in a much improved manuscript. I have learned much about writing from her. Anita W. Bell provided experienced editorial assistance and valuable encouragement when the task sometimes seemed too big.

This book is designed to give information on various medical conditions, treatments, and procedures for your personal knowledge and to help you be a more informed consumer of medical and health services. It is not intended to be complete or exhaustive, nor is it a substitute for the advice of your physician. You should seek medical care promptly for any specific medical condition or problem your child may have. Under no circumstances should medication of any kind be administered to your child without first checking with your physician.

All efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this book as of the date published. The author and the publisher expressly disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects arising from the use or application of the information contained herein.

The names and identifying characteristics of parents and children featured throughout this book have been changed to protect their privacy.

This book is about one of the biggest medical impostors I knowteen depression. A depressed teenager may not at all look like the melancholy or moping depressed adult who is your coworker, neighbor, or friend. Instead, you may see anger, hostility, rage, distraction, indifference, procrastination, rebellion, defiance, intoxication, or malaise. A depressed teen may look anything but sad. I learned that as a medical student, and I was reminded when my own son became depressed during his second year of high school.

As parents, we have little difficulty figuring out if our children have chicken pox or tonsillitis. We can even be on the mark when we suspect a bad appendix. But we seem to have big trouble figuring out when their mood problem is something more serious than just being cranky, uncooperative, or down in the dumps. Even though we may be guilty of hurrying our children into adulthood, teenagers do not suddenly morph into sophisticated adults. They may not wear their emotions correctly, and we should not take their disposition at face value. Making matters worse, doctors themselves admit that they have not been astute in diagnosing when our children might be depressed. Physicians now calculate that most teen depression goes unrecognized and untreated. The results can be catastrophic.

This book is about wisdomparents wisdom. If you want to know something really accurate about yourself, a revealing insight or even a harsh truth, be sure to ask your mother or father. You are just as eagle-eyed about your own children. No one else is. That is why, for this book, I conducted about one hundred interviews of parents who have depressed teenagers. I asked these parents how they figured out the depression, the steps they took to help their children, even how they kept a suicide watch. You will read what worked and what failed. Parents wisdom comes from the trenches. In every chapter, you will hear their wordswhat they have to say about emotional health, anger, illicit drugs, intimacy, community, forgiveness, spirituality, therapists, exercise, herbs, the ideal home, high school, college, and how to talk to a teen. As a result, this book is not antiseptically clinical. Yes, all the pertinent medical facts are here. But above all, this book is humanistic, because parents tell how their teens illness unfolded in their own homes.

This book celebrates the parent. When a child is threatened by an illness, I know of no person who rises up so quickly to the call as a parent, even when tired, troubled, or worried about a stack of overdue bills. I know of no one who joins the battle so tenaciously, or who can so effectively deflate the stigma in which depression seeks its protection. Most of all, a parent owns the crucial ingredient of the prescription against depressionlove. There is new and compelling scientific evidence that parents are a vast and invaluable resource in their childrens fight against several emotional illnesses, including depression. The misfortune is that this plain fact has not been realized sooner.

The urgent message here is that you should take action. In fact, you may have no choice but to answer the call to become a partnering parent, because your health insurance may limit your teens access to professional mental health resources. In these pages you will learn the Ten Strategies of Parental Partnering, all derived from parents experiences, on how to partner with your teens physician to get the best and quickest results, and to prevent a relapse of the depression. Because I am a physician, I could refine and polish the strategies when necessary.

This is also an optimistic book. Your childs depression is conquerable, and it becomes an especially feeble adversary when a parent is involved in the fight. Moreover, these parents say, when the misery of depression strikes, new bonds, new love, and new insights and skills may be forged from the fire.

In this book, I will ask you to partner with professionals and to closely monitor the life and health of your child. You want to support your teen, but you dont want to intrude. You want to show your concern, but not come off as autocratic. Youre probably worried about crossing that mythical dividing line that separates the lives of teens from the lives of parents. You might still hold to the idea that some kind of familial highway exists with teens going one way and parents the other. Veer over the yellow line, and you are guaranteed a head-on collision.

The separateness of teens and parents is a bit of nonsense legitimized for a while by a deplorable notion called the generation gap. Probably because my parents never subscribed to it, neither did I. For several decades, though, I heard it invoked as an easy and ready excuse for all kinds of failures at cooperation or dialogue. The failures most often were due to being closed-minded, not to a chronological difference of twenty-five years. I am most thankful now that that awful notion is being discarded, rightfully tossed into the Dumpster of outmoded or false ideas.