LOURDES COLLEGE

Higher Education Department

Capistrano – Hayes Sts.,
Cagayan de Oro City

A Research Paper entitled

"A Deadly Trend: Thoughts of Filipino teenagers about people faking their

depression."

Submitted to

MR. EDGAR NAMUAG, LPT

Instructor

Submitted by

Dael, Andre Mikyle M.

Caguindangan, Sam A.
Gallogo, Kennyben M.

March 12, 2020

Introduction

Depression is one of the emotional problems, and hopelessness and helplessness are

its main causes. Punay (2019) stated that depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide

and is a major contributor to the overall are 3.3 million Filipinos who are depressed, which is

considered one of the highest cases of depression in Southeast Asia. According to Winkel

(2011) One of the main concerns with faking mental illness is that it can become real very

quickly. Depression is a serious and common mental health condition, but in some cases,

people may fake or exaggerate symptoms to obtain rewards or to avoid undesirable outcomes,

(Schimelpfening, 2020).

Teenagers also thought that depression makes a person looked “beautiful.” “There is

more interest in the topic and more self-identification”. Kutcher (2019) stated that he sees a

trend of romanticized depression, of self-victimization. He said that “You see kids self-identifying

as having that depression, but they don’t have a depression. “People use the word ‘depression’

if they can’t find their keys, or if they've had a fight with their mother or father, or if they’ve had

an argument with their boyfriend or girlfriend, if they didn’t make the school team or didn’t do

well on an exam.

Jazmin (2018) quoted that: "So many of us fake happiness and hide our emotions. Our

society labels depression, suicide and suicide attempts as attention seeking, selfish, crazy acts.

This isn't okay. And it isn't true. Depression is a serious illness and nothing to be ashamed of.

Bottom line, depression isn't a figment of the imagination. It's an illness caused by a

combination of chemical imbalances and flawed mood regulators in the brain, which is hardly

within someone's control."

In this study, the researchers would like to investigate teenagers for research purposes

only. Thus, this study is made.

References

Kutcher, S. (2019). Sun Life Financial Chair in Adolescent Mental Health.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression

Punay, E. (2019)  3.3 million Pinoys Suffer from Depression.

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2019/08/29/1947360/33-million-pinoys-suffer-depression

Schimelpfening, N. (2020). How to Know If Someone Is Faking Depression.

https://www.verywellmind.com/faking-depression-1066887

Winkel, B. (2011) Fake Mental Illness. https://www.treatmentsolutions.com/blog/faking-mental-

illness/

Jazmin, B. (2018). Depression: You can't fake it till you make it.

https://www.sane.org/information-stories/the-sane-blog/my-story/depression-you-can-t-fake-it-

till-you-make-it

Crossman, A. (2020). An Overview of Qualitative Research Methods.

http://www.thoughtco.com/qualitative-research-methods-3026555
Methodology

Qualitative Research is a type of social science research that collects and works with non-

numerical data and that seeks to interpret meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics,

metaphors, symbols and description of things from these data that help understand social life

through the study of targeted populations or places, (Crossman, 2020). This study is a

descriptive research method that describes the characteristics of the population or phenomenon

that is being studied. This methodology focuses more on the fake depression of teenagers. The

researchers gather data from various sources in scholarly articles online and books using

descriptive research method. The respondent in this particular survey was a teenager. The

respondent was evaluated from the study through an interview that the researchers provided

and made.
Results

The researchers found that some teenagers have fake depression when he or she has

attention seekers, sad because they need attention, mentally incapable, and over

exaggeration. During the interview the researchers arrived the result that if they have a

depression it is a serious problem, it should not be joke around people are turning it a

personality traits. It makes person unenthusiastic about everything. A disorder in which

many people aren't able to speak up or open up. Some teenagers had experienced

depression. There were a causes of depression: Family problem, insecurities and their

self. They feel that if their friends or relatives have a fake depression they concerned,

they would listen to them even if it's fake or not because they might have encountered

some problems that is misunderstood if trying to fake a depression would rather result

to a true depression and it's a mixed because depression is not a joke.

Discussion

The results that the researchers found out that if there were a fake

depression we should take a look of what the problem that they

encountered in order to make the fake into true. There are some problems

of teenagers have a fake depression because they were not expressed

their feelings on what the problem they encountered.

Therefore, fake depression is not the problem that they encountered it

could be the problems the they could not expressed through their feelings.