About JacobJacob Thiede is a 20 year old sophomore at Salt Lake Community College. He love hiking, sports, photography, and basically anything that deals with the outdoors. He is finishing his Associates Degree in General Studies, and plans on continuing his education at a four year college to pursue a career in physical therapy.
Jacob has seen the effects depression can have on people. He wants people to understand how it feels to have mental illness. He chose to focus on depression in order to stop stigma and spread awareness. |
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In today’s society, many people with depression can be considered as someone who is just “fishing for attention”; but few people do not fully understand how severe this mental illness can be, or how it can affect children at a young age.
It’s a chilly November evening, the wind is blowing and leaves are falling off the trees onto the cold ground. As I walk into a longtime friend’s house, Josh Green’s warm home lingers of the light sent of pumpkin pie as fills the air around me. As Josh and I walk into his living room to begin the interview he brushes his curly blonde hair to the side as he takes his seat. Though I have known Josh for many years, I didn’t realize how long he has lived with this illness. Generally people become depression between the age of 18 to their mid-40’s; unfortunately for Josh, he started to become depressed at a much earlier age. Josh explained “I was diagnosed last year, but I’ve known the symptoms for a while”. With a lump in my throat, I find that he has known the symptoms for six years, the same period of time that our friendship begun. This hit me especially hard because I had only known about his depression for three years now. Not knowing how he would react to the rest of the questions we proceed with a new question; has depression affected any relationships that you’ve had with friends or family in anyway? After asking the question Josh puts his elbows on his knees and replies with a shaky voice “with friends, yeah. It’s harder to keep friends liking you when you’re down in the dumps”. His answer struck me, not realizing how what he has gone through with suffering with this. With so many people being affected by depression, it can easily affect those around them and make it difficult for them to stay close to others. Because the symptoms for depression range from being sad, to irritability, it can easily push those around you away. As we come to the middle of the interview I ask Josh if his depression affected his job and or school work. As he sits looking at the ground, his now long curly hair now a mess, he twiddles his thumbs and responds “it hasn’t affected my job so much, but it has affected my school work. It makes me not want to do my school work, so I don’t do it; and it makes it a poor job when I do it”. Losing interest and motivation is one of the main symptoms for depression, it can be very difficult for those suffering with depression to find motivation to do activities and complete different tasks that they have to accomplish. With this loss of motivation, many people with depression can lose their jobs and also fail out of school. Finishing the interview I ask him one final question, what do you think is one of the most important warning signs of depression for children and teens? He pauses for a moment, then looks up and says “when they stop wanting to do the different things that they loved to do”. Looking back to when our friendship first began, we first met during our first lacrosse practice. Josh is a very athletic, and well built, perfect for lacrosse; he loved to play but after two years decided to quit because depression was affecting him so badly. At the time I was surprised as to why he stopped, but now it makes sense to me. Looking up Josh ended by saying “depression can easily take over your life, but you just have to figure out a way to handle it”. Green, Josh. "Struggling at a Young Age." Personal interview. 3 Nov. 2015. |