Depression in Teens: What Parents May Miss Behind Good Grades
Every parent in NYC knows how competitive academics are in New York. Before your child is even reading or writing, you may be scouring Park Slope Parents and New York Family, or attending workshops on how to set your kid up for success in school admissions. With the amount of parental stress that goes into your child's education, it is hardly surprising that kids - and particularly preteens and teens - feel that stress themselves.
Parents are often aware of this and want to reduce that stress and anxiety and ensure their child's well-being, and a strong report card can be a reassuring sign that they are doing OK. For many parents, good grades, participation in sports, leadership roles in school events and communities, and an active social calendar is their signal that their teenager is doing well. However, achievement and emotional well-being are not the same thing (as many adults know from their own lives): teens can earn excellent grades while feeling like nothing they do is enough, have dozens of friends while feeling isolated, be involved in clubs and sports while feeling anxious and depressed.
At Lexington Park Psychotherapy, we often work with families who are surprised by this disconnect. Parents sometimes seem puzzled because their child is well-liked, responsible, and doing well in school, and feel blindsided by the realization that they feel alone, unhappy, and emotionally exhausted by the effort required to maintain an image of composure. Therapy for teens can be an invaluable resource not only for the teens themselves, but for parents who - as we will discuss below - are often in a uniquely bad place to address their children's feelings.
Depression in high-achieving teenagers can be difficult to recognize precisely because teens are so adept at maintaining an image, particularly with their parents, and because many very smart people are capable of remaining productive, even when they feel terrible. Good grades matter, of course, but they are a poor indicator that a young person is doing good.
How Academic Success Can Mask Teen Depression
In Manhattan and Brooklyn, high-achieving teenagers often learn that their performance really matters. In New York City, where there are so many high-achieving students to compare yourself, where everyone's parents seem to have impressive careers (creating the subtle expectation that they will too), where the first exposure to school has been a highly competitive admissions process, and where going to an elite university seems required (with all the college application stress included), the pressure to perform can become a part of daily life. It is no wonder that when it was studied, nearly half of all NYC teenagers experienced depressive symptoms.
The long hours of studying, sports, music lessons, plays, and other after-school activities can always give your teenager something to do, and that can give them a way to mask their feelings behind activities. Parents can hear about the difficult practices or an unfair grade, but what may be left out is how they are feeling - about themselves, about their friends, their future.
Of course, the same thing happens with adults; we all know someone who is always working, or out with friends, someone who always has a project, and although this can make it seem as though their life is fantastic, it often conceals a view that their value as a person is linked to being productive.
That does not mean ambition or perfectionism always causes depression in teenagers, but it does mean that ambition and perfectionism can make a teen's internal states harder to identify. When a teen’s identity is organized around being “the smart one,” “the reliable one,” or “the successful one,” and when all you have to go on is their external behavior, it can be confusing to figure out whether they are doing well or merely appear like they are doing well.
Depression Does Not Always Look Like Sadness
As we often discuss, depression is more than feeling really, really, really sad. Many people expect depression to manifest in obvious symptoms of sadness: crying, hopelessness, inactivity, excessive sleep, or a clear decline in functioning. Of course, those symptoms occur, but depression in adolescents can present differently.
The National Institute of Mental Health notes that depression in children and teens include irritability and loss of interest in usual activities, which can sometimes be hard to identify compared to your baseline teenager. But the point is that a teenager who is depressed may not say, “I am sad” but report that everyone and everything is irritating, that school is pointless, or that even hanging out with friends isn't fun anymore.
It is important not to pathologize normal human behavior and adolescence typically includes normal mood shifts, conflict with parents, a desire for privacy, and fights with friends that some online therapists and social-media influencers are overly quick to diagnose. The fact that this behavior is a perfectly normal part of being an adolescent is part of the reason why depression in teens can be hard to identify. Although it too is imperfect, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry offers a helpful list of symptoms for identifying depression in teenagers:
Increasing irritability or defensiveness that feels out of character (the "out of character" part is important)
Withdrawal from friends, family, teams, clubs, or activities they used to enjoy
A loss of pleasure in things they once enjoyed
Difficulty sleeping, sleeping far more or less than usual, or persistent exhaustion (this last piece is common among teenagers, especially NYC teens who are constantly overworked)
Changes in appetite, eating patterns, or complaints of headaches or stomachaches
School avoidance, frequent lateness, and especially a feeling of dread about attending class, turning in assignments, or giving presentations
Declining concentration, growing indecisiveness, or taking an unusually long time to complete schoolwork
An increase in self-criticism, guilt, or fear of disappointing others
It is important to note that you don't have to wait until your child's lateness to school becomes "frequent" or that you can confidently label their reluctance to hang out with friends a genuine "withdrawal." The reality is that therapy for depression is often extremely helpful in preventing depression and for helping people identify skills to get out of that feeling once they are in it.
How Parents Can Help: Responding to Teen Depression
Parents are in a tough spot. Nobody knows your child better than you but at the same time you are precisely the people they want to hear from the least. Therapy for teens can take some of this pressure off; a therapist for teens in Manhattan can provide a space to discuss how they are feeling with someone who cares and understands, but who isn't their friend, parent, or teacher. That can make it feel like there is less "on the line" and make the discussions more productive.
Nevertheless, many parents (reasonably enough!) want to know what they can do to help at home. Parents often feel the need to become detectives of their teenager's mental lives, or feel that they need to force them into a conversation they really don't want to be in. What helps most is a calm, direct, and compassionate willingness to engage in conversations that center their interests and expertise. Teens can identify conversations that have an agenda to them (e.g., "how's homework going," "how's [friend's name] doing?") from a mile away - sometimes before you even realized that you had something you were getting at. Instead, try asking them for advice ("I've heard there's some good shows now - what would I like?", "I need to update my playlists - can you help me?"). If you can communicate that you care about their interests and are willing to recognize their authority in a particular area without needing them to reassure you, you can get a lot out of them.
It also helps to make room for feelings that do not have an obvious solution and resisting the urge to help them "fix" situations. Resist the urge to to explain why their teacher took that tone with them, why their friend might be justified in being upset, or what they can do better next time. Even though that kind of response is well-intended, kids often feel that their parents aren't treating their problems seriously and rushing to provide solutions (or even reassurance) can do just that.
Adolescent Therapy in Manhattan with Lexington Park Psychotherapy
At Lexington Park Psychotherapy, our team understands the complexity of teenage life and has experience with the middle-to-highschool and highschool-to-college transitions. We provide wrap-around services and are prepared to communicate with teachers, guidance counselors, speech-language pathologists, and other related service providers as needed.
If your teen appears successful but feels different, if they seem withdrawn, irritable, exhausted, or disconnected from the things they once cared about, adolescent therapy can be a helpful way to course-correct. If you're curious about how we work, or what comes next, reach out for a free consultation.
