Teen Depression

Because there are many concerns for treating teen depression with drugs, many parents are looking at physiotherapy as a treatment and cure. Physiotherapy could be the only treatment you need for your teenage child to help them overcome their depression and it can also help in their motor skills and help them become more active.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is arguably the most effective treatment for depression amongst all of the theoretical approaches. As a parent you might want to discuss with your family doctor how this can help in treating teen depression. Cognitive- behavioral therapy believes that a person’s thinking and belief systems are the cause and root of the depression. There are certain characteristics thought patterns that a person with depression has which cause them to have skewed thoughts and perceptions about the world around them. Cognitive-behavioral therapy helps the patient to understand and recognize their negative and dysfunctional thoughts about the world around them and helps them change those negative thoughts into more positive and realistic ones.

There are other types of therapy that help children who suffer from teen depression and they include: interpersonal therapy which focuses on the personal and interpersonal relationships a person has a helps them cope with conflict; family therapy focuses on the importance of the family relationship in psychological health; and play therapy which utilizes a child’s natural want to play to help them work through their problems and inner conflicts.

Medications
Due to the increased risk of suicides with people who are taking medicines for depression, the FDA requires that all antidepressant drugs are labeled with warnings stating that there are risks of children and adolescents having suicidal thoughts when taking them.  This was determined by a study that involved 4,400 people and 24 different antidepressant trials. The data revealed that during the first few months of treatment the risk of a patient committing suicide doubled compared to those in the control group who were taking a placebo.

This does not mean that your child should not take medicines if they are depressed. Even though the study suggested that there was an increase in suicidal thoughts because of the medication, the people who experienced these feelings were an incredibly small percentage of the study group. This means there should be a greater deal of caution when a patient is taking the drugs. But the expert opinion remains that the benefits of taking antidepressant medications greatly outweigh the risks.

Prozac is the only antidepressant medication that is currently approved for childhood depression by the FDA. The medicines approved for children with OCD are Prozac, Luvox, Anafranil, and Zoloft. This does not necessarily mean that other drugs are less safe. It simply means that those drugs have not been adequately tested for pediatric use. While these drugs are approved for use by children they still come with a warning label on the box as there is not enough information available to exclude any antidepressant medication from carrying the warning.

There are recommendations that the FDA has drawn up for a child who is using antidepressant medications:

•    Make sure you complete the entire cycle of medicine your child’s doctor has prescribed. Always stick strictly to the advice your doctor has given you.
•    Talk with your child’s doctor to ensure that taking antidepressants is going to be the most beneficial path of treatment for your child.
•    Should your child go on a course of antidepressants, watch them closely to make sure they are not showing any signs of increased agitation, irritation, behavioral changes, or thoughts of suicide.
•    Keep in close contact with your child’s doctor and inform them if there are any changes in your child’s behavior.
•    While it is incredibly important that you watch your child closely through the early parts of your child’s treatment, you must also keep close watch as your child’s behavior through the changes in the medication, IE: increases or decreases in the level of medicine.
•    Doctors will ensure that your child receives the lowest effective amount of medication possible so that the risk of overdose is minimized.

Should you use medication or psychotherapy when treating your child for depression? It all depends on the severity of your child’s depression as well as what caused it. Your doctor may prescribe a combination of treatments or they may think that just one form of treatment is going to be enough to help your child. For the most part, doctors usually prescribe a combination of therapies as they tend to get better results.

Antidepressant medication helps the brain balance and helps get rid of the depressive symptoms. After the medication, your child will begin to feel better, but the negative feeling may begin to come back and the negative thoughts which lead to the depression may still remain. Therapy will help the child understand these symptoms and cope with them much better so that they can get better and live a happy normal life.