When I was a junior in high school, I was depressed.

I was doing well in school, president of three different clubs, an editor of the yearbook, a performer, popular with friends-and I was depressed.

If you live in the Rivertowns, you have probably seen headlines over the past couple of weeks about Martha Corey-Ochoa, the Dobbs Ferry graduate who committed suicide late last month. If you've read past the headlines, you know she was valedictorian of her class, a student at Columbia University, a composer, seemingly highly driven and successful. And, it appears now, depressed.

Her story is, by all means, not mine to tell. I make no pretense of knowing her particular situation any more than anyone else who followed it in the news, but as I read these headlines and articles, I felt driven to share my thoughts on it as an illustration of how direction and accomplishments among our young people often do not denote satisfaction or self-knowledge, or even less, happiness. Moreover, in many cases if not in hers, the over-direction and externalized measures of success many of our youth experience can result in even the most accomplished individuals feeling detached or dissociated from their achievements-and from themselves.

Throughout our schools there are teens who, in varying degrees, are experiencing this dissatisfaction, this disconnect between what they say and do and how they feel on a daily basis.* It is more complicated than saying simply that we expect too much, or there's too much pressure, or that they just have to do what everyone else wants from them, though all these things are certainly true. Teens today have been inculcated in an outcome-driven society, one where the test scores, the achievements, the activities can seem to (even if, as parents or teachers, we don't believe this to be true) define their worth, even to define them.

What we can do is to help our teens learn that though their path is well-defined, each step they take along it is their own, and that only when they find in themselves their true destination--one that marries of all the inevitable and necessary outside truths with their own gifts, goals and imagination--will they be able to reach it. 

Sarah   

*The CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance study showed that 23% of high school students nationally had felt sad and hopeless enough over a two-week period to halt usual activity. Eleven percent of 10-19 year olds are estimated by the Surgeon General to be suffering from a mental disorder such as depression or anxiety enough impair functioning their functioning. You can find citations for these facts and other statistics about teen depression and suicide on the Columbia University TeenScreen Program's website.