DR. BELISA LAZANO-VRANICH ON CLINICAL DEPRESSION:

Depression is a medical illness. It's a combination of biological and environmental factors. It has a combination of symptoms, ones that have to do with how your body feels and also emotionally how you feel. Changes in appetite and sleeping patterns, irritability, anger...wanting to isolate yourself, feeling withdrawn, not having the same interest in doing the things that you used to before; having low energy, low motivation; feeling forgetful; unable to concentrate. So those are some of the symptoms, and what depression is specifically is a combination of all those symptoms over a certain amount of time.

There is a lot of stigma around depression. It is a medical condition – people forget that it's a medical condition. And part of the reason that it's difficult is because you can't see it. So if you had a broken leg you can see that you'd get medical attention; with depression you can't see it.

A lot of adults may tell you "this is just part of growing up. Oh, you're moody, or you're grouchy, or you're having a bad day," and that this is part of being a kid, this is part of being an adolescent. If you actually have a few of these symptoms, and they're severe enough, that is not part of growing up. That's depression. They're two completely different things. As an adolescent, you may feel, some days, frustrated with being at a certain stage of your life, with school, with your parents et cetera – that's not depression. That's something that's completely normal and part of adolescence.

Depression is very common. Seventeen million Americans suffer from depression. In children, it's one in thirty-three, as you become adolescents it gets closer to the adult numbers, which is one in four women will suffer from clinical depression at one point in their life, and one in eight men. So, as adolescents go, the numbers get higher. There are a lot of outside factors that can trigger a depression besides the biological one. It can be that you are under a tremendous amount of stress at school in combination with the death of a loved one. It can be that you are having a hard time with a certain person at work.

It can be that you're having a problem with a relationship and that there's stress at home – maybe divorce, maybe fighting, maybe you're not getting along with a sibling or a combination of those two things. Stress can be anything, be it at home, be it at school amongst your friends.

In order to get help you need to talk to someone else. It's not something that you can do by yourself, so you need to find an adult that you trust and let them know that you want help, and let them know how you're feeling. This can be a school counselor, it can be a teacher, your parent might be able to know where to send you, it might be a neighbor that's an adult. You should definitely try to find somebody that's professional that's used to dealing with adolescents and in mental health, however. Counselors in school, like I said, are good people to look for, and…if you think you might be feeling depressed, two people that you might be able to reach out to are a school counselor or your medical doctor. If your family has a therapist you might be able to reach out to them, and if you know about agencies or clinics in your neighborhood, you can call them.

Therapy is a safe place where you can go to try to figure out some of your problems. It's not like talking to a friend because the person that's listening to you can help you grow. They can help you figure out your problems so that eventually you can do it on your own. Therapy is a place where, um, you can use therapy as a sounding board,

Therapy is a place where you can vent, but also where you can problem solve, and where you can become stronger. Therapy is a place where it's safe to say and talk about anything that you want, where the person whose with you will not judge you for anything that you've done.

Eighty percent of people that seek treatment feel better. The treatment is successful, they feel much better. The symptoms either go away completely, or are reduced a significant amount. So treatment is effective, most definitely. If you're feeling depressed and get treatment, you will definitely feel better.

It's good if you can talk to your friends about how you're feeling, if you have people that you can trust and let them know how you're doing. But a good friend will also tell you to go get treatment from a mental health professional, from a doctor, from a psychologist, a counselor, a social worker. So venting to a friend and letting them know how you're doing is good, but also you should have that friend help you get treatment. If you're depressed, you may need medication. What the medication will do, the anti-depressants, will do, is take the very lows off of your depression, stop you from feeling suicidal, help you sleep better, get you back on track. It will not stop you from being sad if something sad happens and it definitely won't make you feel high or happy all the time. It just helps with the most severe symptoms it helps alleviate the most severe symptoms and it help you be able to function, get to school, get to work, that's what anti-depressants do.

Anti-depressants should always be used in combination with therapy, and you may not need to take them forever, it might be that you need to take them for a few months, for a year. In some cases people need to take them for the rest of their life, but that's something that you can decide with the doctor. That's something that you'll have to sit and make goals for yourself and have a good understanding of.

You may have heard of certain anti-depressants like Prozac, like Zoloft or Paxil, Robutrin, Elivile. Those are all names of different types of anti-depressants. They're good medications, they're not street drugs, they're medications that will help balance your body, the chemistry in your body. And they should always be taken in combination with going to therapy.

KELSEY, ON HER TRIP TO "THE EDGE" AND BACK:

It’s like your whole world isn’t cool. I don’t know how to explain it. You don’t want to eat, you don’t want to sleep. You don’t want to do anything…I shut my parents out. Then they got mad at me. I’m usually open with them…

[on the death of her brother] I felt really mad at the world on how they could do this to my brother. I thought that was the world who made my brother so depressed. I felt really shocked. I didn’t know how to feel at first. I cried, I screamed, but you know, I really didn’t know how to feel…The year before he died, he started giving me clothes and different things to let me borrow and things like that. And now that I look back on it, I think it was a sign that things were wrong. But I didn’t realize it at the time.

For teenagers, they think that suicide is the only option, there is no other way out. But if you really think about it, suicide is not the option. People might say it is an option nowadays, but it’s not. You need to find some way of getting help. Just go to a counselor, a friend, a teacher and trust me, things do get better. I found that out from personal experience.

I think my brother couldn’t handle the pain anymore and he didn’t want to do anything else about it. He’s been through a lot. Ever since he was born, he’s had troubles, he’s had problems. And he thought that was the only way he could get out of it. He didn’t want to live anymore.