Excerpt from Treating Depressed Children

A person’s belief system is comprised of both rational and irrational beliefs. Children and adolescents, like adults, have a particular belief system. Rational beliefs are those that usually tend to be consistent with objective reality and lead to self-enhancing emotions and goal-directed behaviors. Irrational beliefs are generally distortions of reality, are expressed automatically, and lead to negative feelings that often block goal attainment. Irrational beliefs may also remain dormant or inactive and only be activated in specific situations or stressful events.

excerpt fromThe Estrogen-Depression Connection

Depression can occur in a subset of susceptible women

as a result of natural fluctuations in estrogen levels

associated with the developmental stages of a woman’s life.

Let’s break this sentence down into sections:

Excerpt from Is He Depressed or What?

To put it very simply, women tend to think and process their feelings when they are depressed, and men tend to act. A man who takes action in the face of depression can either be extremely adaptive (such as going out to look for a job if he is feeling depressed about being unemployed) or extremely maladaptive (such as picking a fight and getting drunk to escape feeling bad about himself). Research studies report that when women describe what they actually do when they are depressed, they say, “I try to find out why I feel the way I do,” or “I try to analyze my mood” (Nolen-Hoeksema 1993). For men, the patterns are typically quite different. Most men report that they turn to an activity they enjoy or simply decide to distract themselves from the bad feelings: “I decide not to concern myself with my mood.” Of course, many people (especially men) are likely to respond with “What do you mean, depressed?”

Excerpt from Transforming Depression

How well you manage your attitudes and emotions each day determines to a large extent how much vitality you will experience overall. Most people think fatigue sets in because of all the things they have to do or because they didn’t get enough sleep. They often overlook the energy drain from out-of-control emotions.

Different triggers in life can cause stress to run through your system, creating frayed nerves, fatigue, and overwhelming, out-of-control feelings. Once this occurs, it’s important to recover from the stress fast, otherwise your energy drains away. Taking emotional responsibility to get into heart rhythm coherence helps to rebalance your system. Coherence also helps you develop the intuitive discernment to see how to stop draining energy and renew your vitality. This is especially important when you are trying to lift depression.

by guest blogger Melissa Kirk, co-author of Depression 101

I remember the moment I realized my rumination was contributing to my chronic low mood and sense of frustration with life. I lived about a mile away from my job, and in nice weather I would walk to work through neighborhoods of beautiful homes and lush gardens. People in Berkeley love their gardens! On my walk, though, I tended to ruminate - to obsess over what was wrong in my life, to replay difficult incidents and conversations, to worry about what I was missing: the right relationship, the perfect body, the "right" personality. By the time I got to work, I would often feel more tense or distracted than when I had started out, and often I would have missed the beauty of the homes and gardens along the way.

I always thought there was something inherently wrong with me that I got depressed and sad; I figured that somewhere, way back when, I hadn’t learned some vital lesson that others - the ones who didn’t get depressed - had learned. In the back of my mind I always figured I was flawed in a deep, core way that meant that I would never have the things that others had: marriage, successful career, physical beauty, the ability to connect easily with others. This is what I would ruminate over on my walk: why can I never seem to be able to do the things others do? What was wrong with me?

Excerpt from Choosing to Live

So, how shall we view suicide? Here’s what we recommend:

1. Get rid of the stigma
2. Adopt a problem-solving point of view.
3. Keep an open mind.

Excerpt from Choosing to Live

You may ask, "Well, shouldn’t suicide and suicidal behavior be stigmatized? Isn’t it sinful, after all? Besides, we surely want to do everything we can to discourage self-destructive behavior."

We want to do all we can to prevent suicide and suicidal behaviors, but it is unlikely that laying guilt trips on depressed people will be helpful. Aren’t depressed people already some of the guiltiest-feeling people around? If guilt were an effective strategy, we would expect depressed people rarely, if ever, to commit suicide. Most depressed people already feel bad about themselves. A threat of moral condemnation is unlikely to have any positive impact on someone who already believes he or she is bad.

by guest blogger Sheri Van Dijk, MSW, author of The Bipolar Workbook for Teens

I recently read an article about a study that compared high school and college students from 1938 to those in 2007, and concluded that mental health problems such as depression and anxiety are much more of a problem for modern-day students than they were in the past. It does seem that mental illness is affecting more and more people at a younger age – or perhaps we’re just more aware of these kinds of problems now. Regardless, there are things we can do to prepare kids better for the pressures they’ll be facing in life.