Name : Ajeng Gandari Primalia

NIM : 20180510441
Class : LTC HI A6
Theme : Reaction Essay

Mental Health

Depression is one of mental illness that is currently experienced by many teenagers.

This article taken from theconversation.com and published on the first day of June 2018 by
Michael Saphiro explains about mental health and its relationship with teenagers today.
Recently, depression is experienced by many teenagers. From my perspective, I think that
this article is well organized and is very helpful for providing information about depression or
other mental health problems. This article begins with a diagnosis of depression in teens, then
they explained the reasons why teens could experience depression, along with the biggest
barriers to recover from depression. The reasons why teens depression is longer than others,
is explained along with different responses of parents in responding to depression that their
child has. It also explains many terrible effect of depression. Then, they explain the reaction
and reasons why parents refuse to provide special care for their children. Although this is a
short article, the information is quite complete and easy to understand. However, I think this
article needs more data regarding the exact percentage of the number of teenagers who
experience depressive symptoms from a credible source, to make this article more valid.

I think that mental illness is one of the important issues that should be of concern to
the wider community, one of them is teenagers. Recently, many teenagers struggle with
mental illness, especially depression. It is mentioned here that it is estimated that one of the
eighteen students can experience depression, while the rest are undiagnosed. This can occur
due to lack of identification of depression. There are several barriers which caused this to
happen. One of them is the lack of psychiatrists in the countries around the world which
makes it difficult to identify whether someone is experiencing depression or not. Moreover,
many parents are not aware of mental health problems that can be considered very severe,
due to lack of knowledge about it. Other than that, high maintenance costs of the treatment
can also be a barrier. It can be concluded that the parents are the biggest barrier in dealing
with mental illness. Research has noted that between 12 to 26 percent of parents report that
they do not want to help, or do not want to seek help for their child depression.
 In my opinion, this is really related to people stigma about mental illness. People
often assume that people with mental illness as a crazy people. This will make teenagers will
blame themselves for having a depression because they are afraid to disappointed their
parents. This is one the reason why teenagers suffering from depression longer than other.
Under these circumstances, it will be fortunate if the parents immediately bring their child to
be given a special care once they aware of depression symptoms experienced by their child.
However, it is very unfortunate for teenagers who are unable to get treatment because their
parents feel that depression is not really important to take care of. There are still many
parents who refuse to provide care for their children who have depression for various reasons,
such as not wanting their children to take antidepressant medication, or not giving up their
time and resources to ensure that their children have received treatment. I think this is
unfortunate because to get special care, teens under the age of 18 must get parental
permission. I think this is a serious barriers in dealing with depression experienced by teens.
These barriers must be handled immediately because depression can cause various impact,
which is can worsen their brain function, can damage their body function also their immune
system, even can encourage someone to commit suicide.

Beside to providing information about depression in adolescents and their causes and
barriers, I think this article of Mental Health is also very relevant to what is happening right
now. This article also changed my point of view of depression as a mental health problems. I
feel that depression is not something that can be underestimated, because it can causes many
terrible effect. I realize that many people around me were suffering from depression. I’ve
seen some of my friend have done self harm, like scratching their wrist with a knife. It was
very terrible and I was very sorry for them. There was nothing I could do but accompany
them, so that people like them would not feel alone. I want them to feel that they have
someone else by their side who will always help them.

In conclusion, I think depression is a very serious symptom because if it is not

handled properly it will have a very dangerous effects. People should stop thinking that
depressive symptoms are just ordinary symptoms which does not need to be taken seriously. I
feel that depression cannot be cured simply by comforting the sufferer, because depression is
not as easy as people imagine. In addition, parents should also pay more attention to their
children who experience symptoms of depression. Be sure to identify whether the child is
experiencing symptoms of depression or not, and if the child starts showing signs, parents
must be alert to give them special care. I also believe that children also need genuine care and
affection from parents to be able to recover from the depression. I would strongly recommend
this article of mental health to many people, especially for the parents to make them aware of
the danger of mental health problems, especially depression in teenagers. People must be
aware that these teenagers need the right help, so that they can be free from the depression
and they can live a normal life like the others.