Depression

According to Statistics Canada, the incidence of depression is highest among females aged 20 to 24 and living in Alberta, which practically makes me a poster child.

You don't read or hear much about depression and young people because they're likely to shrug off trouble signs, mental-health experts say.

With less life experience comes less ability to judge what's normal and what needs to be treated, explains Auston Mardon, assistant program manager for the Alberta Mental Health Self Help Network.

We investigated the relationship between attachment styles and negative affect using Bartholomew and Horowitz's (1991) model of attachment. Attachment styles with a negative self view (i.e, preoccupied and fearful) were expected to be associated with more distress, especially the fearful style which involves negative views of both self and others. Measures of attachment, depression, depression proneness, and social anxiety were administered to 293 undergraduates.

Dealing with teen depression: How to tell the difference between moodiness and a serious illness

It's common knowledge that teenagers are moody. A teen might be irritable sometimes, feel great one day and sad the next, and have varying sleeping and eating habits. However, teenagers can also suffer from the illness of depression. How can you tell whether your teen is depressed or if the moodiness is 'normal'?

Depression hurts mind and body

As Shakespeare wrote, "When troubles come, they come not single spies but in battalions."

He could have been writing about Canada's recent problems with SARS, mad cow disease and West Nile virus. So I can't imagine a better topic than depression when so many of us are thinking "Why, God, have you done this to our country?"

Noted humourist Art Buchwald suffered from depression. About this trauma, he wrote, "Everything was black. The trees were black, the road was black. You can't believe how the colours change until you have it. It's scary."

Catherine Burton(1) was hardly the type to fall to pieces. The attractive blond with the lusty laugh and wicked wit had always been the life of any party - until two summers ago, when her dog died. Naturally, she was devastated. But weeks passed, then months, and she was still having several crying spells a day and feeling unusually worried, frustrated and unmotivated. In fact, it was the same overwhelmed, I-can't-cope feeling she got every time PMS hit - but this time it persisted, and it was getting worse.