Depression constitutes a serious public health problem that requires more and better attention. In this essay, we review the epidemiological panorama of depression in adolescents in America and discuss some strategies for its early detection and timely attention. Depressive symptomatology is prevalent in young people and adults in America, as in many other countries, with a higher proportion of cases among women. Young people in more conflictive socio-urban conditions show higher rates of depression. If you are looking for an expert service to get your perfect essay on depression you can check https://bestessaywritingservice.org/.

Although depressive disorders are more prevalent in women, in men their consequences can have even greater consequences than in women. Stigma towards depression in men can lead to attempts to mask symptoms through high-risk behaviors. Women have higher suicide attempt rates, but in men the attempts are more lethal. The rates of consummate suicide in men are higher in most countries of the world, and America is no exception. Despite the barriers and scarce resources in health and education institutions, it will be necessary to continue developing alternatives that allow better attention to the mental health problem in the young population. In this article, we will provide you with a guide on how to write an essay on depression. This article will serve as a guide on how can write a good essay on depression and what are the steps involved.

Introduction To Depression

Make sure you have introduced your essay well in order to grab the attention of your readers. A perfect introduction must include the following:

For a long time, the depressive and anxious symptoms of the adolescent were considered, in particular, as a psychological problem, but over time it has been observed that there is a significant percentage of patients with these symptoms in which the problem is not psychological, but rather neurobiological. This talk will present the approach that should be taken, and what should be discarded, to circumscribe the syndrome in a teenager. This type of pathology can be analyzed from three points of view, in terms of its ethology: psychological, systemic and neurobiological.

Main Body/Argument Of The essay

Psychological Aspects That Favour Depression & Anxiety In Adolescence

It is the time in which the personality is being configured. Children are driven by the patterns that the family prescribes; in fact, children should not be argued, which is the opposite of what should be done with adolescents, who need to configure their self, challenge it and challenge or test others of the environment, so they require argumentation.

This is particularly important for the emergence of hypothetical deductive thinking. Teenagers tend to represent the world through generalizations with which they feel they have acquired a kind of power over reality. To this is added the sexual awakening, which means that behavioral disorders and anxious depressive symptoms are not uncommon at this age.

With respect to the issue of personality configuration, it should be borne in mind that the presence of parents tends to blur, the influence of peers becoming more important, which are the ones presented by the models through which adolescents conduct themselves. They experience and feel reality, that is, there is a generational paradigm.

Another interesting aspect is that the personality structure is also determined by the position in the family system or fraternity, so it is not irrelevant to be the oldest or youngest child. In a study that analyzed the position in the family system, it was found that people who make big changes are usually second children, while those who come out to answer are older children, which shows that the structuring of personality is determined by this fact.

Top Arguments To List In The Essay

Systemic/Family Aspects

The family system has aspects that make it functional and that when they are not fulfilled make it dysfunctional, causing anxious and depressive symptoms that in turn, are always functional to the maintenance of the system.

A family system that works well has two forces in balance: one force that has to do with the union of the system and another, with the tendency to differentiate. Each of the components of the system can make their own world when leaving the family, which is not always true, as with drug addicts, who have a pseudo differentiation after leaving the house.

Another element that the family system must fulfill in order to be functional and promote that adolescents reach a good end is to have a good capacity to adapt to environmental changes and internal tensions caused by changes in the family life cycle.

In the period of adolescence, the internal tensions of the system have to do with the emergence of hypothetical deductive thinking and sexual activity, so it is common for the older son to continue being raised as to when he was a child.

Symptomatology arises in the adolescent when the system is unable to move from one stage to another when it becomes rigid in one stage and to maintain balance at that stage it is required that a person of the system present symptoms.

Neurobiological Aspects

Until a while ago, this type of symptomatology was seen as a reaction, but now there are data that show that serotoninergic, noradrenergic and dopamine systems are involved in its production.

It is known that these systems are directly related to some system dependent variables; For example, norepinephrine has to do with motivation, serotonin, with behavioral energization, and several neurotransmitters have been identified in depression.

There is a large amount of data indicating that depressive symptoms have to do with neurotransmitter imbalances; For example, serotonergic neurons accumulate their soma in the mesencephalic region in the nuclei, and there are five pathways whose imbalance causes the symptoms to appear:

  • When the pathway from the midbrain to the cerebral cortex is unbalanced, depressive symptoms occur.
  • When this occurs in the pathway from the midbrain to the basal ganglia, an obsessive-compulsive disorder appears.
  • When it is the third way, the one that goes to the hippocampus, the affected one, panic disorders occur.
  • Finally, the alteration of the pathway that leads to the pituitary hypothalamus system causes eating disorders.

Then, the imbalance of certain neurochemical pathways is being linked more and more with well-defined pictures, which were previously believed to be determined by the person’s biography. Reactive depression, which is a normal psychological reaction against an adverse event, must be distinguished from endogenous depression, an old term, but which will probably be back in fashion soon.

Before Closing Draw A Solution To The Problem

When evaluating anxious or depressive symptoms in an adolescent, it is relevant to consider the symptom as an indicator of the pathology of the system, without forgetting that there are pathological family organizations that lead to the appearance of the index patient. If this point of view is not lost, long and unnecessary treatments can be avoided.

In systems therapy, the family must be considered as a system, remember that there is a mutual prescription of emotional behaviors and patterns, and behavior as homeostasis and as meaning must be analyzed.

An example is the case of Marcos S., a patient who was in 3rd grade and who began to present a very marked myoclonus in one hand, along with a hyperemesis so intense that he had to stop going to school. He was hospitalized in a very top neurology service, leaving at 15 days with a diagnosis of ” nonspecific myoclonus.” This patient improved completely when, after analyzing a family interview, he was told that every time his parents fought, he left the house.

Close All Arguments In Conclusion

To know if the symptoms are psychological or neurobiological there are tricks; For example, if there are sleep disorders, this is neurobiological, but if there are appetite disorders, with specific cravings for carbohydrates, what the patient needs is not family therapy, but an antidepressant in sufficient doses and for a recommended time.

Anxiety was long considered to be a psychological response to environmental situations, and was defined as an omnipresent and uncontrollable concern, accompanied by symptoms of muscle tension, irritability and sleep disorders, for example. It was thought to be a stress.

Today it is known that anxiety is a chronic and recurrent disorder, with episodic exacerbations, which maintains in the patient a certain level of chronic anxiety whose main responsibility is the GABA receptor, which is normally inhibitory and when stimulated produces a hyperpolarization, but is in lower number in subjects with anxiety without treatment, compared to controls. The administration of benzodiazepines increases the concentration of these receptors.

All this has led to the involvement of other neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine, which can be studied in circulating platelet receptors, and the serotonergic system whose neurotransmitters would be smaller than in major depression, so it has been suggested that this picture, more than with tranquilizers should be treated with antidepressants.

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