Depression
Dr. Sayee Kumar sees students with depression rather frequently nowadays.
Parents often show up at the part-time therapist's office describing how their child's symptoms have become “quite disturbing to them or others.” The parents tell Kumar their child throws things, often expensive mobile phones, in moments of rage and talk about attempting suicide.
Dr. Kumar says children don't communicate the same way adults do when it comes to expressing emotional distress. The American Psychology Association says that youth of all ages, but especially younger children, find it difficult to recognize and verbalize distress. In his experience, if a child or teenager has depression, it generally goes unnoticed until an incident or group of incidents occurs. These are behavioral symptoms or behavioral problems, according to Kumar, who has over 30 years of experience as a therapist.
“So the moment the behaviors are changed, then the school and the family will take note of it and then they land up with us,” says Kumar. “Especially after some critical incidents. For example, if they talk about suicide or attempted suicide. Or if they develop any other kind of conversion symptoms.”
A conversion disorder is a psychological disorder that occurs when a person's internal stress and anxiety show up in strange behavioral ways that cannot be explained by a medical examination. In the town that caught Tourette's, many psychologists believe that it was a case of conversion disorder. So Kumar sees students who come into his office with involuntary movements caused by the physical expression of their internal anxiety.
Sayee Kumar
Kumar then takes their initial complaint and investigates further to figure out the underlying issue in order to treat them.
Another thing about depression that prevents it from making itself known to others or to society is that, because it's a mental health issue surrounded by a lot of stigma, it only expresses itself vividly or noticeably in cases of moderate or severe depression, according to Kumar.
Sanjay Gupta on Everyday Health said that symptoms of depression such as feeling hopeless, guilty or sad are not readily visible to others, unlike symptoms of physical illnesses.
But without many noticeable symptoms of a mental health disorder, cases such as depression often go without getting detected. Depression tends to prevent even the person affected by it from recognizing the problem, Kumar said.
“Mental health should not be considered only in terms of serious mental health problems,” Kumar said. “It should be considered as a normal problem that anybody can go through. But the problem is that everybody needs to know when it is going out of their control. But then that is a challenge because it is a decision-making ability of a person - that itself is impaired so how the person will be able to decide?”
This inability to recognize the problem is what led Divya Prabha, Kumar's daughter, to suffer with depression for years before she finally realized she needed to do something about it and seek help.