If you're a depressed child, your depression is every bit as real and worrying as that of an adult. You should seek help as soon as possible. This article provides some things to consider doing to help yourself.
1Ask your parents, guardians or teachers for advice. Ask a person you know that you can trust and with whom you feel comfortable. Tell them the things that are bothering you and let them know why you are feeling so low. It is important that they understand very quickly that you are having feelings of depression.
2See a doctor or local health professional. Whether or not you feel you can talk to a parent/guardian or teacher, you should feel able to talk to an independent third party such as your doctor, a nurse, or a counselor. They will be able to provide advice to you on what to do next and doctors can prescribe medication or other medical interventions if they judge that this is needed.
3Deal with the cause of your depression. If you are suffering from problems at school or elsewhere, it is unlikely that these problems will go away unless you face them and find strategies to cope better. For example, if you are being bullied, taunted, hit, or hurt in any way, you must speak to people in authority to ask them to have the behavior stopped. If you are worried about the repercussions, talk through the possible solutions with people who can do something to help you, such as walking you home with people who will take care of you, having teachers keep an eye over bullying tactics, and even changing schools or after-school activities so that you are no longer around the people who cause problems.
4Do not neglect yourself or put yourself down. Depression is a very real illness and is often a reaction to events that you feel you have no control over and cannot change. Depression makes things worse for you because you start to believe that things will never improve and you might even blame yourself for the things that are happening. None of these feelings are healthy, nor are they right. You deserve better, you deserve to have people take care of you and bring you back to full emotional health. In some cases too, you might have a chemical imbalance which the doctor will need to monitor and help with. Another important outcome of getting help is that you can learn coping mechanisms that will help you to avoid falling into a depression in the future.
- Keep telling until someone helps you. Depressed is often thought to happen in adults only, but that is not the case.
- If you ever have thoughts of killing or hurting yourself, tell a trusted adult as soon as possible.
- Talk to your mom and your dad about how sad you are! If they don't know, you may get sadder and sadder.