“[Depression] makes you feel tired. You don’t want to do anything, it almost feels like you’re fake sick, without a cough and sniffles; you feel drained,” junior Tatyana Barrett said. “But I’d also like to say that it’s mostly mental [for me], it’s all in the head.”
Barrett is not alone in her experiences with depression. In 2014, depression affected approximately 11.4 percent of people ages 12 to 17, and 17.3 percent of females ages 12 to 17, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Along with depression, anxiety is another rather common mental disorder among teens and adolescents. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 25 percent of students age 13 to 18 have a sort of diagnosed anxiety disorder.
There are many types of depressive disorders that can all occur with any anxiety disorder, all of which can be addressed by medications.
“I started on Zoloft, actually, in ninth grade because… I was not prepared for the high school workload and it has not calmed down throughout my whole high school years,” senior Jordan Pollard said. “I just had to get used to not having time to do the fun things I used to do to ease stress. I was so anxious and stressed that it was debilitating. There were some days that I couldn’t go to school because I couldn’t breathe and Zoloft has helped a lot, but I still have a lot of anxiety issues.”
However, medication is not for everyone. Although some people find it extremely helpful, others do not agree with or cope well with the effects of medications for depression.
“I don’t believe in depression medicine; I feel like there has to be another way to cope with it or fix it,” Barrett said.
Regardless of whether a person’s depression is chronic or not, individuals handle it differently.
“There are two different types of depression that I experience, one being punch drunk; I act goofy and laugh and makes jokes about killing myself and although it alerts my friends, I act [as if nothing is wrong],” an anonymous junior said. “The other type is almost like a catatonic state where I cannot move, or speak, unless [I go] to use the bathroom or get water. I just sit in one space for hours, not doing anything.”
While some students find they can manage their depression or anxiety with medication, some find that their anxiety can make it very hard to function in school.
“We have had some students whose anxiety did get to the point where they were not capable [of completing] school,” school counselor Telisa Hunter said. “But sometimes it’s not that they can’t complete it here at a public school, maybe there are alternative settings that work better for those students.”
Former student Jean Berry, who would have graduated this June, says he dropped out due to his diagnosed anxiety and depression first semester.
“I was close to failing my classes because of my absences, I was pretty close to getting OSS for my tardiness, and I just… didn’t want to do that anymore,” Berry said. “My therapist wrote letters recommending that I stay home for my health and she kept writing those weeks at a time until I finally just dropped out. I just wasn’t getting better. Being at home didn’t make me feel better because I still had the pressure of school on me. I was expected to make up the weeks of work I was missing once I came back. So I dropped out entirely.”
While anxiety and depression are very different disorders, they can have similar triggers.
“Every kid I’ve ever talked to with anxiety… if you ask them why, they’ll say their family, they’ll say their friends… but invariably, they’ll always say school too,” Pollard said.
Some students find that a stressful and overwhelming part about school that makes anxiety and depression disorders worse can be the workload.
“I would skip my homework just so I could get enough sleep at night and then I would stay home the next day to catch up on what I didn’t work on,” Berry said. “All that got me caught in this horrible vicious cycle where I couldn’t handle the workload, I’d stay absent to try to catch up, but then I’d be swamped with even more makeup work. It was horrible. I started having panic attacks in the mornings because I was so terrified of getting up and going to school to face all of that again. Because I was panicking in the mornings I would get physically sick and either stay home or be late.”
On the other hand, school can help some students ease their depression by providing structure and purpose.
“Most of my anxiety is at home; school is where I get away from that,” an anonymous junior said. “When I come to school I have a plan for that day. Most people dread coming to school and love going home; I, on the other hand, look forward to school and dread going home.”
Students struggling with mental illness have a larger need for outside help in some cases. However, counselors and other administrators are only able to help those who reach out to them through methods like accommodations and therapy.
“The one thing about students is that we can only help the students who reach out, so I can only know about students who have anxiety if they let us know,” Hunter said. “As a school… we only have so many resources, so a lot of times when students have anxiety to the point where it’s impairing your judgment or [you’re] having school issues, we can do some things, but we are not trained to get rid of anxiety, that’s not what it’s for.”
Without real help, some students can develop physical symptoms of their anxiety.
“Last year, I noticed I started to lose my hair, in clumps,” an anonymous junior said. “When I went to the doctor they blamed stress, and recommended ‘chilling out’ as a solution. The issue with that was the load of work I had brought onto myself, resulting in anxiety.”
According to Hunter, there is a difference between diagnosable anxiety and depression and small amounts of anxiety and depression.
“Everyone has anxiety, it’s just to what extent and to what level,” Hunter said. “Some anxiety is a good thing because that’s what drives people…. Anxiety is an issue when it becomes unhealthy.”
Due to the possibility of anxiety and depression becoming disruptive to one’s life, many students have found it helpful to see therapists or psychiatrists.
“When I was talking to my psychiatrist about whether to go back to school this semester or not she said, ‘Well, if you think there’s a chance your depression might get worse again, you shouldn’t go back. The goal is for you not to be depressed,’” Berry said. “No one had ever told me that before. It took me a minute to process what she had said because the goal had never been for me to not be depressed before.”
Students have also found other ways to help cope with their depression and anxiety.
“What actually ended up being my saving grace was exercise, so I actually lost 20 pounds after gaining… 15 [due to depression],” senior Ricky Young said. “Whenever I had time to free up [to be] a little less focused on school work over the summer was when I started getting myself back and started feeling a little bit more happy and liked who I was.”
There are options for accommodations for mental illnesses through the school, according to Hunter.
“If your depression or anxiety impacts your ability to perform in school and you’re maybe being treated by a doctor, psychologist, therapist, something like that, there is an option under the Americans with Disabilities act to do something called a 504 plan which could… provide you with accommodations if you qualify,” Hunter said. “There are also some times when teacher will just, if they know about a situation, will also offer accommodations to students if you were going through something like that.”
Berry sees the need for accommodations in schools for students with mental illnesses.
“You wouldn’t tell a kid in a wheelchair to just get over it and try to use the stairs like an able-bodied person,” Berry said. “So the school shouldn’t be forcing mentally ill kids to do things that neurotypical kids can barely do.”
– By Jessie Craig and Sawyer Davis
