Depression in Adolescence

IN THE FLOOD of his vitality, the adolescent may frighten or anger the adults around him with his brazen arrogance. The handsome young man or beautiful girl, both wearing long hair and tight blue jeans, strut across the contemporary scene, exciting the adults with their beatnik bravado, intellectual virtuosity or courageous social protest. G. Stanley Hall, 1 in 1904, wrote eloquently of another, more unhappy side of adolescent existence. He said:

The same youth with all his brazen effrontery may feel a distrust of self and a sinking of heart, which all his bravado is needed to hide. He doubts his own powers, is perilously anxious about his future, his self-love is wounded and humiliated in innumerable ways keenly felt, perhaps at heart resented, with a feeling of impotence to resist. The collapsing moods bring a sense of abasement and a complacency to all that comes, suggesting spiritlessness. Youth often fears itself lacking in some essential trait of manhood or womanhood, or wanting the qualities of success. He is often vanquished in innumerable rivalries and competitions that now make so much of life, and loses heart and faith. The world seems all the more hopeless because of the great demands which the opposite mood (more arrogant and demanding) has imposed. Sometimes a sense of shame from purely imaginary causes is so poignant as to plunge the soul for a time into the deepest and most doleful dumps; fancied slights suggest despair, and in place of wanted self-confidence there is a retiring bashfulness; which no coaxing or encouragement of friends can overcome or fathom, and which may express itself only in some secret diary or perhaps in prayer.

The reference to prayer dates this back to the turn of the century, but otherwise I believe that what G. Stanley Hall described as typical of the "normal" depression of adolescents, holds true today. Of course, even in adolescent society we have, today, our organization