Chapter 16 post 2 sadness and anger

The reason I picked sadness and anger this week is because I have been through depression and sadness throughout my adolescence ; and I know a lot of teenagers go through the same thing. I feel that depression is a pushed over topic, parents that I know don't believe their kids could be that young can be that sad. I know my family, and my friends family wouldn't believe we were going through trouble , because we were young and they just thought it was a phase. When in some cases things were life threatening at the time. I feel that depression is an ingnored subject and a lot or kids are going through things that a lot of elders do not understand. On page 449 under "sadness and anger", "troubles plague 20 percent of youth, who often have several problems at once. Distinguishing between norm moodiness and pathology is complex; many adolescents are more depressed and angry than they were as children." (Berger, 449). I like this statement in this paragraph because this verifies that a lot of teenagers are depressed more than they were when they were younger. From my personal experience and friend experience I know the reason that led to our sadness was low self confidence. We seemed to be the most low when someone would make fun of our looks or when we just didn't feel pretty or good enough. The book actually states "the general emotional trend from late childhood through adolescence is toward  less confidence." (Berger,449). Studies show that parents and peers effect self esteem, and I know this from first hand that my moms comments about me losing and gaining weight at times led me to low self esteem. Also , the book states "often young adolescents with very low self esteem turn to drug use, early sex, and disorders eating- all which further reduce esteem" (Berger, 449). I also thought this statement was interesting becuse a lot of my friends who were depressed had early sex got into drugs and had starved themselves and I never compared the two. I never thought they did all those things because they were depressed, I thought they did it just for a cool self image. I like this section on depression because this actually led me to see why my friends got into a lot of bad areas in there life and verified that a lot of kids are depressed. I thought these facts and statements were very interesting and helpful back ups behind my statements.