What Comes First: Depression In Teens Or Emo Music?

In my senior year, an ex-boyfriend committed suicide 4 days before Thanksgiving. He displayed all the warning signs - telling people for months that he hated his life, and wanted to end it, acting out in seemingly spontaneous anger, but when he didn't month after month, we just thought he'd tough it out - he also talked about graduating and joining the Marines. Two weeks before he died, he started giving his stuff away, a big red flag, but he did it on the sly so that no one who received anything had any indication that he was giving stuff to other people as well, or that there was a finality to it (he didn't give anything to me, I think he knew I'd be suspicious and say something to his family or a teacher). Everyone was shocked when we got the news, and wondered how we'd missed it, blaming ourselves for not recognizing his depression and doing something to help. Everyone gave his stuff back to his family, and felt it the rest of the year, especially when track season came around and he wasn't there.

Depression is common in teenagers, and recognizing its symptoms is difficult, especially trying to tell if your child can handle it and grow from it, or if it will become overwhelming and they feel the need to do something drastic. This story hit a nerve when I saw it, so I thought I'd post it.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/04 ... c=fb&cc=fp
What Comes First: Depression In Teens Or Emo Music?
by Nancy Shute
April 6, 2011

Teenagers are more likely to be depressed if they spend a lot of time listening to music, while teens who read a lot are less depressed, according to new research.

Pediatrician Brian Primack, at the University of Pittsburgh who was the lead author on the study, says it's more likely that depressed teenagers are turning to music for solace, rather than music being the cause of the mental illness.

Parents may want to think about depression if a child is retreating into music, Primack says. "Depression is harder to discover in young people compared to older people," he explains. "Sometimes the signs and symptoms in adolescence are different. Maybe there's more irritability as opposed to sadness." Music may be a clue that a child needs help.

How did Primack and the other researchers investigate the connection? They called 106 teenagers on special cellphones as many as 60 times over eight weeks and asked what they were doing. About half of the teens had been diagnosed with clinical depression by a psychiatrist. The teenagers listened to music 9 percent of the time on average. Those who listened to lots of music were 8 times more likely to be depressed than those who didn't listen very much. By contrast, teenagers who read were far less likely to be diagnosed with depression. They were also far less common. Just 0.2 percent of the teenagers said, they were reading a book, magazine or newspaper. The teenagers who read the most were one-tenth as likely to be depressed as the ones who read the least.

The study: http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/conten ... /165/4/360