TEENS & SELF-IMAGE
11th annual survey results

Results roundup: What 272,400 teens said about how they feel about themselves.

Survey results: Complete national survey results.

Faith: Religion plays a powerful role in teens' everyday lives.

Mental health: 37% of teens surveyed have a friend who has considered suicide.

Teen roundtable: Our Teen Panel talks to Tipper Gore about being accepted, sexual pressures and their parents' infuence.

Voices: Advice, insights, questions from students. Respondents who were picked for honors.

Bolster yourself: Learn 10 ways teens and parents can work toward a healthy self-image.

Issue date:
May 1-3, 1998

When depression turns deadly

37% of teens surveyed have a friend who has considered suicide. Joshua Burton, 15, was one of them -- until he got help.

The Burtons

oshua Burton had never been particularly upbeat or outgoing. His grades were average. He never got into trouble.

But over the past three years, Dan and Kitty Burton watched their son become increasingly quiet and moody. "He was somber, not happy with life," Dan Burton says. "I was constantly asking him, 'What's wrong? What's wrong?' And he'd say, 'Nothing.' He just wasn't able to put his finger on it."

Last year, Joshua started getting into trouble. He was caught smoking cigarettes and sneaking out at night to see his girlfriend. His parents thought it was typical "kid stuff." Joshua, too, thought his angst was normal, even after he developed an explosive anger and secretly began cutting his arms with a pocketknife.

"I thought, 'Oh, everybody's going through this,' " says Joshua. He was getting into fights, and friends told him he seemed angry all the time. Sometimes he'd disappear and the police would deliver him back to his rural home in Jordan, Minn., 45 minutes outside Minneapolis.

The Burtons weren't sure how to handle Joshua. They tried grounding him. They tried talking to him. They consulted county mental health officials. But nothing seemed to work.

"The good news is depression is highly treatable. The bad news is most depression goes undiagnosed." -- Philip Gold, National Institutes of Health

Then, last July, the Burtons found suicide notes in Joshua's bedroom wastebasket. They decided to hospitalize him. There, he was diagnosed with clinical depression and put on anti-depressants. But four days after returning home, Joshua sat on the stone floor of his parents' barn with their .22 hunting rifle in his mouth.

"I sat there and prayed: 'I'm gonna die. Please watch over my parents; please watch over my girlfriend and my friends,' " Joshua says. "I must have sat there an hour. I had my thumb on the trigger the whole time."

or too many teens, Joshua's symptoms and story are not uncommon. Thirty-seven percent of teens who responded to the USA WEEKEND survey report that friends have discussed or tried suicide. Seven in 10 teens say they experience depression. And last year, 2,000 teens committed suicide. Like Joshua, 87 percent of boys ages 14-18 who attempt suicide have a previously diagnosed disorder, usually depression, according to the Oregon Research Institute.

"The good news is that depression is highly treatable," says Philip Gold, a depression specialist with the National Institutes of Health. "The bad news is that most depression goes undiagnosed."

Diagnosing depression is difficult. The signs -- fatigue, loss of appetite, lack of self-esteem -- can so easily be mistaken for other problems. "People see the teenage years as especially tumultuous, and they'll write it off as what it means to go through a stormy period in life," Gold says.

That's why Joshua's condition eluded the Burtons, despite a history of depression on Dan's side of the family. "As soon as you see behavior like that, you should be taking a hard look at it," Dan Burton says. "I gotta admit, we blew it off at first."

Joshua still isn't sure why he didn't pull the trigger. Instead he stole his father's pickup and wound up in juvenile detention, the hospital and, finally, a residential treatment center.

Now Joshua is turning his life around. He's trying to quit smoking, he's back in school, and he talks to his parents -- who have removed the rifle from the house. He plans to take over his dad's lawn and snowplowing business one day.

His struggle against depression is not over, but the Burtons believe the worst is behind them. Once Joshua got the help he needed, he realized "everything wasn't as bad as I thought. Things were actually good."

Photo Credit: PER BREIEHAGEN FOR USA WEEKEND