BY: CLAIRE KIM
Personally, I don’t recall a time where I experienced depression as a student. Of course, I received stress at times, but it isn’t very severe or serious. As a rising eighth-grader, it scares me to see that “one-third of California’s 11th-graders and one-quarter of seventh-graders reported feeling chronically sad or hopeless”.
When I look at the results from the surveys that the California Healthy Kids Survey conducted, the numbers shock me incredibly. The percentage of kids experiencing depression go higher as time flows by, and this really concerns me.
I was a seventh-grader last year and I have to admit it was not easy. Before attending middle school, my dad had already informed me that seventh, ninth, and eleventh grade would be the hardest to endure. Seventh grade was rough. It was a time for me to realize that being independent and responsible was taken more seriously, and grades were more crucial.
I bet there are many reasons as to why people feel depression, but I think that the two most common reasons are social anxiety or academic stress. I feel stress all the time when it comes to academics, but to overcome the stress I have other activities that I do. I think playing sports is really helpful and many people should realize that having hobbies or hanging out with friends is the best option to avoid depression.
Depression is not something that can be treated easily. Some remedies that I have in mind for people who are diagnosed with depression include releasing stress, sleeping, eating, and doing exercise. Encouraging yourself to be involved in sports is a great step to take to steer away from depression. Getting lots of sleep, relaxing the mind, and releasing stress are ways to improve self-stability as well. Best of all, try to eat in a routine and eat foods with lots of nutrition benefits and taste good! Also, I think it’s nice to have peer support, whether being friends or family, whoever it is, someone that can help support and cheer you up will help a lot. Of course, results will not show automatically, but I think following some of these tips will really help to improve depression in the long run.
As young adults, let’s enjoy our lives right now because we will probably regret this moment later.
claire kim. 