LEVEL 3

• When depression isn’t treated it can get worse and last longer.
• When depression IS treated you can feel better soon.
• Approximately 5 out of 100 teenagers get seriously depressed each year.
• Talking to family and trusted friends about how you’ve been feeling is still helpful.
• Writing about problems you’re facing, your feelings and thoughts, and possible solutions is also still helpful.

(Read Level 1 and Level 2 Find Help Sections)

• Try to work at spotting depressive or negative thoughts that lead to your depressed mood.
• Make a plan to replace depressive thinking with positive thinking.
• When you face big problems that you find very difficult to solve, it’s not surprising that you might experience low mood.
• If these problems seem overwhelming and cause you a lot of stress and suffering, you might slip into a mild or major depression.
• Research has shown that some people who develop depression have experienced an unusual amount of stress, conflict or loss before the depression. So, learning to deal with life problems can help to prevent depression.
• If you feel so overwhelmed that you stop trying to solve problems, the problems will get worse and make the depression worse.
• Learning how to solve problems better should help to overcome depression.
• At this point counselling is very helpful and probably a good idea.
• You can talk to a trained professional about your thoughts, feelings and behaviour while working with him/her to find where your problem exists and learn methods to fix your problems and change negative thoughts and behaviour.

Go to HELPLINES