Raising an adolescent is among the most difficult tasks that the parent has to perform. After all, all parents wants to do right by their teenager, helping the teen to prepare for life and become a responsible member of society while giving her or him room to develop. Teens are frequently moody and difficult, lashing out and acting irresponsibly because they demand freedom. With all the complications of raising a teen, it is easy to miss serious psychological problems your son or daughter might be developing.

Unfortunately, adolescent depressive disorders is both one of the most serious teenage problems and one of the easiest to miss. I understand. I have experienced it all raising my youngest daughter Elanor. When she was 13, she suddenly began to change. She was wearing odd clothing, spending time with different kids and acting more and more isolated from the remaining family. I really wasn’t able to recognize the the signs of depression in her; to me, it looked like she only agreed to be acting out as she tried to discover her very own identity. But, as time went by, her adolescent depression only began to get worse.

It got to the point where her grades were slipping, she wasn’t thinking about school anymore, and she would almost never smile. She used to be an outgoing kid, and that i knew this was more than just simply acting out. There was something going on with Elanor, and she urgently needed help.

I took her straight into see a family psychologist who had treated one of my nephews a couple of years before. This guy tried a really good job, and I knew that he would be able to recognize the symptoms of adolescent depression. After I first took Elanor in, I was a classic distraught father. I though she might be involved with drugs also as other unsafe activities. Following talking to her for a while, the therapist called me in to his office. Both he and Elanor were smiling, and I somehow knew at that moment that everything would be alright.

He verified my suspicion that my daughter was struggling with teenage depression, but assured me that it was a normal part of becoming an adult for some teens. He had had a long talk with Elanor, and together they had decided that she would really benefit from an in depth course of therapy. For the next few months, she went into the doctor’s office twice a week to dicuss confidentially about the worries and issues she was facing growing up. Soon, she was starting to feel a lot better, and I had the doctor to thank for it.