New CDC findings are Not Good News for Teen Girls!
In our last post we went over the new finding from the CDC that showed 57% of teen girls felt persistently sad or hopeless. That number was 2 times higher than boys the same age. Their conclusion was that girls were “engulfed in a growing wave of sadness, violence, and trauma,”
Go to that post for more details. This post is about is another finding that came out at the same time. It states that 30% of teen girls had seriously considered suicide. This is up from 19% the previous year. That is a 50% increase in one year.
You Might Be Concerned…
You might be concerned If you have a teen daughter showing any of the symptoms. However, there is a great potential opportunity to avoid the thoughts of suicide. It would be nice if we had lots of studies on this subject and the causes right now. But this is too new of a subject. We can, however, use previous studies and do some interpretation. We do know that some of the biggest side effects of antidepressant medication is suicidal thoughts and tendencies.
Is it a stretch to think that if more girls are feeling a wave of depression that more girls would be taking antidepressants? Doesn’t it also make sense that if past studies have shown that people on those drugs have suicidal thoughts or tendencies that more girls would be exhibiting these symptoms?
For me, that is an easy conclusion to make and until further studies show that to be wrong, I’m going to try to fix those problems. You see, in my opinion, if we can keep the girls off the drugs, we should also keep the suicidal thoughts and attempts down.
Why is This A Problem?
Studies do show that the majority of people who are showing signs of depression are in a brain state called sympathetic overdrive. This is an important state for the brain. It is what keeps people alive who are in a life threatening situation. Unfortunately, it is possible to have enough daily stress in your life to push your brain into this state without having your life threatened.
It is based on how well your brain is able to adapt to the stresses your daily life brings. If your brain becomes overwhelmed you will go into that state. Your brain processes things differently in that state. Often people feel symptoms of depression. It is possible to make your brain work better so it can adapt better. Then, the normal stresses you have will not overwhelm your brain. There is a computer scan that can be done to determine if this is the reason depression is being felt.
We want to help with this issue. So if you have a daughter or son who is exhibiting symptoms of depression, give us a call. We can schedule a scan. Then we can determine if the services we offer can help keep your kids off the dangerous medications.
