Depression in the United States is the main reason someone kills themself about every 13 minutes which is over 41,000 people a year, Depression affects over 300 million people in the world, regardless of culture, age, gender, religion, race or economic status. Depression in the workplace accounts for about $23 billion in lost work days every year. Depression is “a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. It causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease a person’s ability to function at work and at home.” Depression is a rising problem, especially for kids ages 12-17 where it rose from 8.7% to 12.7%. The rate of suicide for ages 15-24 has nearly tripled since 1960, making it the third leading cause of death in adolescents and the second leading cause of death among college-age youth.

Depression is a mental illness that can also affect the body physically by increased aches and pains, chronic fatigue, decreased appetite, insomnia, lack of sleep, or oversleep, weakness in immune systems, and weight fluctuation. There are also many other non-physical symptoms such as anxiety, hopelessness, excessive crying, irritability, lack of concentration, slowness in activities, and suicidal thoughts.

There are a lot of different treatment options for depression, and more than 80% of people who get treatment for their depression say it helps. Most doctors will recommend medication, therapies, medical procedure, or specialist as treatment options for depression. Around 13% of Americans 12 and older take antidepressants, and antidepressant use in the US has increased by almost 400% between 2005-2008. Antidepressants have a lot of side effects, such as insomnia, irritability, nervousness and anxiety, violent thoughts and actions, agitation, suicidal thoughts or suicide, tremors, hostility, sweating, irregular heartbeat, aggression, criminal behavior, confusion and incoherent thoughts, paranoia, and hallucinations. Along with all of those side effects, many people become addicted to them or misuse them which in many cases leads to death. In a book called, A Mind of Your Own, it says that meditation, sleep, and exercise can help your mental health.

Meditation allows a person to release from their analytical selves. While they are in that state they are still mindful of senses, feeling, and thoughts, but there is no negativity. Exercising releases endorphins that can enhance ones sense of well being and take ones mind off the things that cause you to be distressed and that feed depression. A key to fixing depression is to fix ones sleeping schedule and for many, that is to fix insomnia. Rachel Manber a Professor at Stanford conducted a study on treatment for insomnia on depressed people. When their insomnia was fixed their depression treatment success doubled.

I have a friend, who has chosen to be unnamed, who said I could tell her story involving depression. She started noticing that she had depression in the beginning of seventh grade. She was always sad, hated her life, she didn’t like doing the things she used to love, she was always tired, and she would cry excessively. She hid it from the world, she didn’t want to tell her parents that their perfect little girl wasn’t so perfect. As she grew, so did her depression. When she got into the eighth grade she started developing more symptoms and it soon got to the point where she had severe depression. She started to get stomach aches, her head would always be in tremendous amounts pain, she started to isolate herself from parties and hanging out with her friends, it was really hard for her to go to sleep when she needed to and stay awake when she had to, and, she was very suicidal. The first time she acted on her suicidal thought was when she was home alone. She grabbed her notebook and went into the bathroom. She then proceeded to write everyone she cared about letters to read when she was dead. As she wrote them, she couldn’t stop crying. When she finished all of them, she contemplated if she would do what she wanted, kill herself, or do what she should, stay alive. After a few minutes looking at the rope she was going to use to hang herself, she decided to stay alive. Not for herself, but for her dad. She loved him so much and she knew he needed her. If she had done what she so badly wanted to do she knew it would ruin her dad's life and she couldn’t do that to him. So she ripped all the letters up and flushed them down two different toilets in her house to make sure no one would ever find them or be able to connect the pieces. That was the first time she acted on her suicidal thoughts, not the last, and not the last time she had them. In eighth grade, she missed a lot of school because her depression gave her chronic headaches and stomach pains which made it hard for her to focus, get out of bed, and listen. When she got into the middle of eighth grade, she was so depressed, she started cutting. The first couple times were not that deep but the third or fourth time a couple months later was when she went so deep she left a few scars that she will now have forever. She ended up telling her parents, who got her a therapist and she has been doing a lot better. Less than 3 out of every 100 people get help for depression and she was luckily one of them.

No one knows exactly what causes depression, in some people there may be a combination of detrimental things. For some, it can be something small and not very significant. For others, depression develops and they don’t know why. Some reasons it may develop are changes in the brain chemistry. In a book by Levin, Judith some other reasons are inherited genes, emotional shock, stress, substance use, or illness.

Based on research, there may be a biochemical basis that causes depression. Causes may be related to chemical reaction and processes in someone's body. Researchers found that many depressed people’s brains have a shortage of some chemicals. Two of the chemicals are serotonin and norepinephrine, which are chemicals that affect a person's mood. There are medications that can restore the brain's chemical balance such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and Antidepressants. It is still not clear as to what causes the chemical imbalance.

Depression usually occurs in members of the same family. A person who has a relative with depression is almost five times more likely to develop it. A study found that women are 42% more likely to have inherited depression while men only have a 29% chance. A grandparent, cousin, brother, aunt, and parent may all have the disorder. That suggests that some people may inherit the depression tendency. However, depression also occurs in people that have no family history of the illness.

Schools should talk about mental health in a class such as life skills or science because it pertains to both of them. At many schools including my own, the topic of mental health isn’t talked much about by the adults. About one in eight teens in America have depression and middle school is where kids turn into teens. It could help many people if it was talked about in school because those struggling with depression would know they're not the only ones, they could get help, and they could understand some of the reasons as to why they’re feeling depressed in science class. The key thing to helping people with depression and other mental issues is talking to other people or even just hearing other people's stories so that maybe, someday, more people could feel comfortable sharing their story. Since mental health is not talked about much in school many people don't even know what how they’re feeling or what they're doing isn’t healthy. If mental health issues were talked about more in school it would save and help many people who struggle with it.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death in young people and a major cause of suicide is depression. Depression can not only affect someone mentally, it can also cause a lot of physical pain. Yes, there is a variety of different treatment options but they are not known to all people. Depression isn’t talked about that much if at all in school, and when most people think about treatment options they think about therapist and medication, both of which are not accessible to everyone. Many people with depression don’t know about the ways they can treat it without having to spend too much money. In an article by R. Morgan Griffin, couple of ways to treat depression without spending any money or a very minimal amount are meditation, making a daily routine, setting goals, exercise, getting enough sleep, and making a mood diary. My hope in this essay is to spread awareness about depression and that they will be an upstander for those who struggle with their mental health.