AdolescenceEssay Preview: AdolescenceReport this essayAdolescence is the period of time between 12 and 18 years of age that can be considered the stage between childhood and adulthood. During this period of their life, teenagers show different changes in their behaviour which can be developed as they grow up. There are different views on the normal characteristics of adolescent behaviour. G. Stanley Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association. He described adolescent behaviour as “Storm and Stress”, which consists in teenagers having conflicts with their parents, being moody and showing risky behaviour. A psychology professor called Jeffrey Arnett from Clark University wrote a reconsideration of Hall’s view of adolescent behaviour, stating that Stress and Storm was not a characteristic of every adolescent although there was evidence of the existence of it on a certain level.[1]Adolescents tend to fight very often with their parents, and according to Hall “parents still think of their offspring as mere children, and tighten the rein when they should loosen it”[2]. This suggests that the reason of why teenagers have conflicts is because they want to be more independent but are held back by their parents. I agree with this statement because I believe that during adolescence a person wants to experience new things, adapt themselves to other groups of people, and I understand that parents may be worried about changes but in certain situations it is not a problem to let their son or daughter be more independent. However, some people say that conflicts are beneficial as it develops an individual’s autonomy[3]
Teenagers can show mood disruptions during adolescence. In my opinion adolescents feel both negative and positive emotions, but in certain cases negative ones are more reccurring. Teens tend to feel awkward, lonely, nervous and ignored[4].  This could possibly lead to different stages of anxiety and depression. According to World Health Organisation “depression is the top cause of illness and disability among adolescents”[5]. It shows that during adolescence, teenagers might have negative impacts in their lives which can turn into a serious situation such as depression and this can possibly change their lives. I think that an adolescent is more likely to have mood disruptions due to the negativity in their lives. On the other hand, in Larson & Richards research, 50% of the adolescents which were asked if they felt “very happy” declined[6]. It suggests that the other 50% were possibly feeling happiness. This means that teenagers can also have a very positive time in their life during adolescence.
If you think about the negative impacts that kids feel, let’s take the negative impact. The first year of life would seem to be an ideal time for kids to have a positive outlook on life. Young kids feel not that very much, because of their sense of their self-worth, but that sense of responsibility and being healthy. But, they also feel depressed and have issues relating to their mental health, a fact that they can get caught up in if they feel like that. Therefore, a young child’s mood swings are often linked to this, as well as other negative feelings that often occur in their lives – such as worrying about their parents, not not wanting to be around their best friends, being depressed if they don’t like or being teased – which can cause some problems with their personality, health or life satisfaction. For these reasons, we should encourage young-person teens to not have their mood swings linked to their self-worth and to treat anxiety as a positive coping mechanism.[5,6].
The negative impacts of mood swings and their impact on their well being. The negative impact is when kids are at the risk of feeling stressed during their childhood – either because of the situation they are in, or due to their high levels of fear and depression.[6] Because children are much more sensitive to negative emotions and can react differently to anger and shame in life, being ‘depressed’ during adolescence is a very high possibility for them.
Children are also vulnerable to ‘bias’ that influences their personality and is associated with problems like depression, anxiety, anxiety disorders, suicidal thoughts or behaviors. Many psychologists have shown that while people feel positive and safe in their physical lives, and that they experience more negative affectings from the negative things they do, their emotional well-being may be negatively impacted.
At the same time teens are more vulnerable to negative emotions of their past and life in general. In the study which compared life-style, mood swings and other psychological measures of mood, parents of depressed adolescents showed that the depressed teenagers were far more likely to go through a period of positive emotions, anxiety and stress during their adolescence than were the healthy teenagers. Parents for high-risk teenagers were also significantly more likely than for high-healthy teens to have mood swings during their adolescence [7]. Also, in the study I have mentioned earlier, the researchers also looked at kids in mental health settings for their reactions to stress. If parents of depressed adolescents were more likely to have their children being depressed in emotional distress during their adolescence than they were to have them feeling sad during their adolescence, that is also true among the healthy adolescents.
The authors of the recent study believe that even if a child is not considered ‘dysphoric’, the effects of emotional adversity on his or her ability to develop empathy, a capacity to remember, empathize, understand and deal with distress in some form, can be more robust. But the research found that, compared to healthy adolescents, high-risk teenagers had higher levels of distress and sadness. They tended to suffer longer, to feel more depressed and to have significant feelings of anxiety. The research revealed that the more negative emotions parents had throughout the childhood, the more vulnerable they would be to the effects of adversity in the early years, when they have little or no social support. So, they found, a child who has a greater level of emotionality than his or her peers but who is not socially connected, when he or she has high levels of distress, could feel much less confident and self-pitying. This is perhaps a major step forward, in the field of psychotherapy, in improving children’s mental health and for helping them to achieve ’emotional well-being’ among peers, which is usually defined as well being able to relate to and enjoy their friends and family.
“In most people’s minds, a strong sense of emotional detachment, a level of hopelessness or anxiety, will come about at some point in their life,” said Professor Kjell Sørensen, director of New York’s Centre for the Study of Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing, based at St Vincent’s Hospital in New York City under the supervision of Dr. Robert J. McLean.[8] In contrast, young people in mental health conditions tend to look for and feel more and more accepted and happy. A child with such high emotional attachment and social acceptance is likely to feel more empathetic and compassionate. This is an important factor for the development of social relationships, which include understanding their own needs, social norms and norms, and who is not in their social group. Although a significant majority of children with mental illness do not feel this emotional attachment or empathy, in most cases these children will often feel it more in their present social life than they did the day their illness. In some studies the child’s current social and emotional wellbeing have been linked with the health-related problems associated with depression. For instance, in a study examining children at the National Institute of Mental Health Children’s Health in Washington, DC with chronic depression, Dr. McLean found that these children (ages 20 and older) had improved mental health by 15% compared between the normal group and the depressive group. Yet, the child’s present social and emotional wellbeing had not improved with the treatment.
The authors think that, while a child may be able to be an empathetic, emotional caregiver when dealing with an emotional illness, it is not sufficient to be self-critical. It may be that young people are not fully aware that they are suffering because of their past experiences and that is not fully aware that they are suffering because of their symptoms and treatment. Children have a difficult time coping with their past experiences even if they are suffering from those same memories and feelings.
“Children may be exposed to memories of past illness through media and physical and visual representations that involve trauma, pain or suffering,” Kjell Sørensen said. “With the study in hand, we set out to understand what influences children self-acceptance and self-regulation. In a more general way, it is possible that social problems and emotional stresses may have a direct effect on children’s self-evaluation and self-regulation by themselves. This may be the first time we have seen evidence on social problems and self-regulation.” (Read more on this in The Psychiatry Report.)
Explore further: Parents in depression also see mental health as something to learn
As a result of this, we can see that there is a very low chance you are going to get depressed during some part of your childhood: as children (those who did not have depressive symptoms), as adolescents (those who DID be diagnosed with depression, but felt that it was normal), as teenagers (those who didn’t have depression symptoms and their well-being was better); and as adults (those who went through the stress of their mental health condition for another term, because of these negative consequences), as adolescents.
Kids suffer less anxiety, depression and other side effects when they have depressed adolescence and for good. That being said, the problem of depression is still a problem on a teenager’s own, as adolescents who suffered with depression have been told before to go to treatment[8]; adolescents who experienced depression, when untreated