Depression in Teens - Hormones at Work

By: Margaret. H

Depression is something that can be said to pretty common among people all over the world and in almost any situation, and depression can appear and manifest within the body in many forms. Now teenagers, or depression in teens, is something that can happen quite commonly within these pubescent human beings who are going through a whole slew of hormonal and physical changes.

The issue here is that while some teens are able to cope with these natural functions of growing up, some others might not be able to cope so well and they show their inability to cope with things like depression. Now when one person is going through puberty, there are hormonal changes that happen in the body and the darn thing is that hormones have so much to do with the emotional subsystems in the body. When you are growing up or experiencing puberty, there is a surge in the amount of male or female hormones that are circulating around the body and this is because your body is trying to activate the biological triggers within the body to start some growth spurt and allow areas within the body to grow and develop that mark you as female or male.

Now when you are a male, the level of testosterone in your body increases and this is to actually trigger processes like protein synthesis and development of male specific organs and other bodily functions. Your Adams apple will protrude, the voice box will deepen, protein synthesis will ensure that your muscularity grows and your mass and height will also be affected. For the female, the hormone that we are talking about here is estrogen and it does the same functions as testosterone, but only affects different areas of the female body.

Now, with any biological processes and the millions of possible genetic combination out there, there are bound to be side effects and levels of side effects within individuals who are experiencing puberty. One of them is that they are unable to cope with their major physical changes and they might experience things like acne, which might cause them to be depressed about their appearance. Also, hormones at such a level might also incur emotions to go up and down like tidal waves, and they might be out of control of these teenagers to handle.

Because of these emotions and feelings of being segmented from other normal people, they might slip into depression that is common to teenagers. Do not be alarmed if you see your teenager showing the signs of depression, for even an extended period. Their body is trying to get used to the high level of hormones and the massive changes they are experiencing. Be concerned if they become a complete introvert and there is a drastic character change within themselves. Then the problem might be more than just the normal hormonal problem. If you are concerned, approach a child psychologist, who might be able to help you to evaluate your teenager and make the recommendations.

MindMatters Psychology Practice provides child development support services for children and young adults. They also provide an IQ Testing for children to pinpoint any possible asperger's syndrome.