Project seeks to get teens talking about depression
TORONTO, ON—Canada's teenagers are being ill-served by a society that refuses to accept that more and more of them are suffering from the "hidden epidemic" of mental illness. And among those offering them the least help are the churches.
"There's a lot more wounds in our youth than ever before," says Warwick Cooper, the family and counseling pastor of The Peoples Church in Toronto.
"Thirteen-year-olds today have viewed things on the Internet that kids even 20 years ago would never have seen, and families have no idea what's happening with their kids."
A 2004 Health Canada study found that about one-in-four adolescents will experience a depressive disorder by age 19, while fewer than 20 per cent of them receive treatment.
Yet Marshall Korenblum, psychiatrist-in-chief at the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre in Toronto, Canada's largest children's mental health facility, says until recently, even mental health professionals did not believe that children could get depressed.
"I think it's a collective denial—'Children are supposed to be happy and playful, and what would they have to get depressed about?'" he says. "We all buried our heads in the sand. We didn't want to see it. And we're now seeing it even in pre-teens."
Because of the stigma often attached to depression and other forms of mental illness, Korenblum says teens are reluctant to talk about their feelings, especially to adults. He calls it a "hidden epidemic."
"All mental illness is invisible," he says. "And anything that's invisible is a bit mysterious, and anything mysterious can be a bit scary and potentially threatening."
To try to raise public awareness of the problem, the centre enlisted students in the senior drama class at Victoria Park Collegiate Institute to write and perform "The Depression Project"—four short dramas and a debriefing session with Korenblum. They can be viewed on the centre's website and on YouTube.
The project was the brainchild of Lennox White, the centre's audiovisual director. "We call these projects 'anti-stigma projects,' because of the heavy stigma attached to mental health," he says. "The key is to get kids talking about it."
In fact, Korenblum says one of the project's most "rewarding and gratifying" outcomes was the genuine interest shown by the students themselves. "It felt like we struck a note with these kids," he says. "It was as if we gave them permission to come out."
White, a Christian who has himself struggled with depression since childhood, sees no reason why churches could not show these videos. "I would hope that a youth leader out there who wanted to do something on mental health would use them," he says.
But Cooper, who has not seen the videos, suggests White should not get his hopes up.
"I don't think the leaders especially in a lot of the evangelical churches are comfortable with using words like 'depression' and 'psychoses' and 'disorders,'" he says. "I think they still demonize a bit the whole realm of psychology and counselling."
White says Christians have told him all he needed to overcome his depression was prayer.
"There's nothing wrong with saying, 'Pray about it,'" he says. "But just like when you break your arm and you need medical help, if there's something wrong emotionally, you also need help. And God is involved in both the physical and the emotional."
Korenblum is also not surprised that people of faith generally would rather avoid any discussion of mental illness.
"In many religions, suicide is a sin. So if you were having suicidal thoughts, you wouldn't be so quick to fess up," he says. "And yet studies show people who are very religious actually have lower rates of depression."
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