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How does depression affect teens
Depression and its effects in adolescents
Depression and its effects in adolescents
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This article provides information collected from several young adults that grew up with a depressed parent. The purpose of the study was to examine how young people make sense of their world while growing up with a parent that suffers from depression. “The term “parentification” was introduced by Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy to refer to family processes in which children take on roles or responsibilities in their families that are age inappropriate (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Spark, 1973) … In other words, parentification refers to (a) an interactional process within the family and (b) an intrapsychic dynamic that is situated on an imaginary or symbolic level and often remains unspoken (523).” As a result, the young person is often forced to deal with the vulnerabilities and unmet needs of the family that they would not otherwise have been exposed. Children, try to make sense of what is happening within the family while lacking a great deal of vital information. This process of figuring out roles and meaning unveils two themes. First, is the “need for meaning making” and the second is “sensitivity and caregiving”. The child’s …show more content…
need for ‘meaning making’ is impaired because of the parental illness. The child’s “sensitivity and caregiving” spawns an increased feeling of responsibility for their families. It is these two themes that both help, and inhibit the child’s growth. “For parents and children alike, the most difficult discussion point is the distress that children experience about having a parent with a mental illness (Focht-Birkerts& Beardslee, 2000)” (524). Skipping over the methods used for collecting the data used in this study, the intent of the study was twofold. “First, we set out to determine how young adults make sense of their childhood experiences of parental depression. Second, we explored how their retrospective reflections could enable us to understand the experiences of children in processes of parentification” (524). The results of the study revealed three domains: (1) perceiving little room for own experiences, (2) toward a reflective stance, (3) ongoing processes of repositioning in the family. It is these results that will be explored further in this review. These three domains can each be broken down into easily identifiable categories that everyone can understand.
The first domain, “perceiving little room for own experiences” can be broken down into 4 categories: “(a) not in touch with own feelings, (b) reluctance toward talking in the family, (c) feeling responsibility for the family well-being, (d) finding no response outside the family” (527). The second domain, “towards a reflective stance” is broken down into three categories, “(a) growing awareness of parental depression and own emotions, (b) relating parental depression to own identity, and (c) finding supportive connections” (529). The third domain, “Ongoing Processes of Repositioning in the Family” is broken down into two categories: (a) taking more distance from the family of origin and (b) expressing oneself more openly toward the parents”
(531). The therapeutic implications of this study provide some light for the therapist in dealing with families with a member who is struggling with depression. One of the take-a-way’s from the study is, “perhaps the best strategy a therapist can adopt is to knowingly respect the child’s silence and to be present with the child in his or her ambivalence around silence. It is an expression of the child’s loneliness, but it may also be the best way the child found to deal with the pressing difficulties in the family” (533). The conclusion is that those who participated in the study had three common struggles: (1) Action in the service of family well-being and reflection, they (2) felt ambivalent about disclosing their own feelings and experiences in the family, and (3) not dwelling on their own experiences as a way of coping. As the children aged they began to distance themselves from the family to gain perspective on their situation and as a result “seemed to evolve toward more reflection and new “thoughtful” action” (534).
For Bowen, the family is the unit of observation and the emphasis is put on emotional forces that are common to all families, this helps to reduce the significance of which family member is causing the problem. Bowens approach to change is understood within the context of striving to understand life’s forces, the very principal that gives coherence to Bowens approach to therapy. (Friedman, 1991). When attempting to achieve change within a client the source of the issue is less important, but rather trying to locate the systematic forces within a family as well as those that are transmitted from generation...
Families are becoming more diverse and they come in all shapes and sizes. Some people consider families to be strictly biological, while others consider people they love to be their family. Although two-parent families, also known as a nuclear family are the majority, one-parent families are becoming more common in today’s society. A sole-parent is considered to be a parent without a partner or spouse who is the primary care giver of one or more children in a household (Ministry of Social Development, 2010). From the age of 14 onward I was raised by m...
Working with children, young people and their families can be seen as difficult and complex for many different reasons. However, before these topics can be discussed and explored fully, it is important to completely understand the difference between the words ‘difficult’ and ‘complex’. ‘Difficult’ implies that things are not easily or readily done, where it requires much effort much effort, labour and skill to be performed effectively. In the same way, ‘complex’ implies a hard to deal with situation, but also involves many interconnected parts or complicated arrangements that consist of emotional attachment.
The RFS was constructed as a part of a cross-generational attachment study in 1991 to assess parents’ quality of understanding others’ intentionality as demonstrated in their Adult Attachment Interviews. This capacity of understanding mental states is thought to be derived from the function of an internal observer, that is, the “reflective self” (Fonagy, Steele, Steele, Moran, & Higgitt, 1991). In that study, Fonagy et al. (1991) found that first-time parents’ reflective function measured before the birth of their child could predict the infant’s attachment status at ages 12 and 18 months. Furthermore, in a following study on the same sample, it was found that RF was particularly important in the cases where parents reported early adversity in their own childhood. To be more specific, for mothers who reported significant early deprivation history, 100% of those with high reflective function had secure infants (Fonagy, Steele, Steele, Higgitt, & Target, 1994). These results indicate the significant role reflective function plays in the early infant-caregiver relationship and attachment transmission. Because of the usefulness of the scale, the manual of the RFS was produced for application to Adult Attachment Interview in 1998. Although the manual is not published, it has been extensively used in the RF
I found that Virginia Satir’s Experiential Family Therapy is the most interesting and important theory for especially youth. Family has a strong connection to youth’s mental condition. I strongly agree that Satir’s way of practice, which is “bringing the father into therapy,” and she “focused on the development of self-esteem in the family members and helped them to communicate directly and openly with each other,” is effective to the patient’s unfathomable depth.
According to Richard Charles (2001) “the effectiveness of family systems theory rests not much on empirical research but on clinical reports of positive treatment outcomes, the personal benefits experienced by the families that underwent this kind of treatment, and the elegance of Bowen’s theory” (p. 279). Bowen’s family systems theory views the family as an emotional unit and is a theory of human behavior. Systems thinking is used to describe the complex interactions in the unit. However, the client’s ability to differentiate himself/herself from the family of origin is the basis for Bowen’s family systems theory. In addition, the primary focus for growth within the emotional system is differentiation of self.
Looking at recent publications, one has the impression that family therapy is a new concoction from the psychotherapist's alchemic kitchen. It is met with diverse reactions. Some regard it suspiciously, seeing it as a deviation from traditional therapeutic methods; others praise it as an important advance in the treatment of psychoses. Still others view it as a special method for dealing with children.
Structural Family Therapy offers a framework that provides order and meaning within the family connections (Nichols, 2013). Divorce for a family is considered a significant transition for all parties involved. When counseling a family going through divorce the structural family therapist’s job is to build an alliance with the family and obtain information about the structure. The structure of the family consists of the roles, interactions, organization, and hierarchy. Family therapy yields the belief that changing the organization of the family leads to change in the individual members. The structural family therapist often will try to become part of the family to gain a perspective of their issues as whole so not to place the focus on one individual. Joining is an empathetic approach in helping families explain and break down their individual stories without uncomfortable challenge or unnecessary confrontation (Nichols, 2013). It is important to note that family dysfunction that often leads to divorce is not attributed to one individual, but the entire family system. In structural family therapy, part of dealing with the issue of divorce in the family is to focus on the interactions between all the family members both positive and negative. Through these interactions the therapist can discover where the conflicts arise, which will in turn help the therapist understand how these negative interaction affect the family. Family therapy in these cases allows for repair of long-standing interactional patterns in which divorce is just one of a series of ongoing transactions that are disruptive to the child’s development (Kaplan, 1977, p.75). The structural family therapist often has the family play out these family interactions via enactments so that he can get a firsthand look at maladaptive patterns, roles, and
Family dynamics are patterns in the relationships between family members. Every family has its own dynamics and there are very different from one another because of the many aspects that influence them such as the numbers of members in the family, the personalities of the individuals, the cultural background, the economic status, values, and personal family experiences. This paper will analyze the two different relationship patterns found in the poem “Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead,” by Andrew Hudgins and in the short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker. By interpreting those two sources through Freud’s concept of family, the family environment and the relationships between the members will be analyzed to illustrate the ways family dynamics
A parent's involvement typically begins early in a child's life. When a child first opens his or her eyes they should see their parent's smiling faces looking back at them. As the child continues to grow up and develop their parent's constant presence in their lives provides structure. But for some children they do not receive this kind of stability from their parents due to early separation from their parents. Children can be separated from their parents by a multitude of causes like death, adoption, incarnated, foster care, substance abuse and others. Children at the age of three years old or younger are very sensitive to the issue. Parents play an important role in our lives. Our parents help us form who we want to become and our own identity. When children are separated permanently or for an extended period of time from their parents, this can cause a child to respond to the situation in a negative manner (McIntosh, 2010). The loss of a parent or both parents can be detrimental to child's life. The loss can leave behind a scaring effect on a child and could remain with them their entire lives. Early separation from parents can cause children to develop behavioral problems in response to the situation.
Winter, K. (2010). The perspectives of young children in care about their circumstances and implications for social work practice. Child & Family Social Work, 15(2), 186-195. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2206.2009.00658.x
(1) Differentiation of self is when the individual can separate their identity from that of their family’s without completely cutting them off. Understanding the need for individualization is a cornerstone for comprehending the rest of Bowen’s processes. If one cannot differentiate them self from the family they are said to be fused. As a result they live with the family’s chronic anxiety. The less one is differentiated the more susceptible they are at being draw into family (2) triangles. These occur when two members draw in another member to stabilize their anxiety and to release emotional tension. Resolving family of origin anxiety happens through establishing differentiation. The less anxiety the less likely one will be caught in a maladaptive (3) nuclear family emotional system, which is the degree of differentiation one has with their parental subsystem. We also understand that individuals are likely to choose a spouse based on congruent levels of differentiation. Here we understand how chronic anxiety is passed through generations, labeled the (4) multigenerational transmission
Parenting, which is somewhat akin to teaching, should be regarded as one of the three cooperative arts. Thus conceived, it calls upon parents to assist their offspring in the process of growing up, doing so by observing carefully the steps the children themselves take in the process and doing what is necessary to facilitate their progress. Parenting departs from being a cooperative art, as teaching does also, when it tries to be the active and dominant factor in the process -- when parents or teachers think that what they do should be like the molding of passive, plastic matter.
Children live in a world designed for them by adults. The two cultures, child’s culture and adult’s culture exist side-by-side. As the children eventually mature into the adult world, they grow up learning the structure of what is expected of them. As children challenge the authority or expectations, they are battling the construction that was predetermined by the adults. Children have to live in a world where they are living in the structure, as well as being active agents. The two combating ideas are one component that makes growing up a difficult learning experience.
Another hesitation caretakers showed in supporting their children was that they needed time to grieve for the child they had felt like they lost (Budge, Adelson, & Howard, 2013). This was a common theme that divided adolescents and caretakers, while children may have felt different for most of their life, and/or have been accepting of their identity for years, it may be news to the caretaker. The parents