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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…
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”
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...
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.
Murray Bowen developed family systems theory. This transgenerational model looks at how a family’s history informs their present functioning. Today it is a prominent model used by today’s family and marriage mental health professionals. Derived from psychoanalytic thinking and sometimes called natural systems theory, it posits that families are living and evolving systems shaped by chronic anxiety transmitted through its generations. Anxiety is aroused when individuals attempt to balance their individual identity with being a part of a family. This balancing act inevitably causes anxiety, triggering biological coping responses instead of healthy cognition and reasoning (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2012). Erford
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.
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.
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
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
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...
Within this particular counseling setting, the focus is on the interaction of the family members, and involves interventions that affect the entire family system (Henderson, 2016). The goal of this theory is to change the dysfunctional family patterns through a variety of arrangements, from individuals to group interaction. The Systems theory is organized in units made up of different parts, which is a circular, pattern which A causes B and B causes A (Henderson, 2016). Systems Family Theory viewed human nature in a positive perspective, which people are rational and have the ability to make choices (Henderson, 2016). Furthermore, the Family Systems Theory perceives behavior as directly relating to the individual position within the family. There are eight concepts that Bowen believed centered around the Family Systems Theory, many which reflect family boundaries and interactions. These concepts include, relationships between spouses, differentiation of self, triangles, nuclear family emotional system, family projection process, multigenerational transmission process, sibling position, emotional cutoffs, and emotional process in society (Henderson, 2016). Other core concept, determined by other theorist, revolves around centripetal and centrifugal which further describe the relationship styles within the families by looking inward, centripetal, as source of satisfaction; along with, centrifugal, looking outside for satisfaction (Henderson, 2016). In addition, another core concept is family projection process that refers to the transmission that causes symptoms in the child (Henderson, 2016). Many of the concepts described in the Family Systems Theory, are based on the connection, the togetherness, and the conflict that leads to a person holding responsibility within their role within the family.
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
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.