Depression is a medical illness that negatively affects the way someone feels and acts. Something that teachers have been saying is “Depression is common for kids your age.” Studies have shown that twenty one percent of people the age thirteen to eighteen have experienced a severe mental disorder at some point in their life. This is a higher percentage than any other age group. Why is it that depression is more common in teens than any other age group?

Teenagers have been complaining about being more stressed than adults with school being the main cause along with bullying, relationships, and social media. Having these high levels of overwhelming stress causes most depression. Often, teens hesitate to seek help for depression and do not receive any kind of treatment.

School puts a lot of pressure on students because some students have difficulty in keeping their grades up. Both kids that are failing and succeeding are suffering. Students tend to have a large amount of stress when it comes to keeping their grades up. For example, students with a 4.0 gpa or higher can be going through a lot of stress to keep their grades high and making sure they’re doing all their assignments and turning them in on time. Failing is also stressful because besides making sure one gets the best grades on their work, one has to do everything they can to try to raise their grades. These unhealthy amounts of stress can cause high rates of depression.

Another cause of teen depression are school relationships. Teens usually have problems with relationships whether it’s a significant other or simply just a friend, there are many problems between these relationships during the teen stages. Breakups can cause intrusive thoughts and students seem to have a hard time controlling these thoughts. These teens become distressed after experiencing a breakup because they don’t know how to react to it.

Sleep deprivation also increases the likelihood of teens suffering from depression. There are many reasons as to why students end up sleep deprived. For example, some kids pull an all nighter just to finish assignments and others have personal problems that keeps one up at night. Most high school students get far less than the recommended eight to ten hours of sleep each night. Teens with depression have a harder time falling or staying asleep. It’s a dangerous cycle- the lack of sleep affects mood and can cause depression, and depression can cause lack of sleep. Sleep deprivation and depression go together hand in hand.

The most common cause of depression is bullying. Someone can bully another person physically or mentally but it frequently happens mentally. Bullying seems to happen a lot more often in schools then people think. People make fun of others commonly but see it as a joke. Because of this, students ignore it when it’s happening all around them. Nowadays, teens seem to be glued to their phones on social media which is where a lot of cyberbullying happens without many people to witness it.

Overall, adolescent depression rates are increasing as the years go by. They have shown higher rates of depression than any other age group because of because of school, relationships, sleep deprivation, and bullying. These are just a few reasons out of many of why depression is so common among these young students.