Major Depressive Disorder: a quick personal summary

[mopinko]

5. age 18

it is settled science that adolescence changes the circadian rhythms, turning the biological clock to got to bed later, and to sleep later.
imho, sleep disturbances are as often the cause as the effect of mental illnesses. especially in this age group.

my older son, who has a free running clock, couldnt make it through high school. over the course of each month he cycled from being a night owl to being a lark, as they say.
when he was a lark, he was fine. when he was an owl, he would fall apart. i couldnt drag him out of bed w a shotgun.
if i did manage that trick, his deterioration was stark. at one point he had a near psychotic episode.

i had the choice of drag him through school, or let him keep his marbles. i chose the later. to this day he harbors anger at me for letting him drop out. what the heck i was supposed to do about it, he doesnt have an answer.

the science on this is so clear. and it could be fixed pretty much w the stroke of a pen by making high schools, at the very least, start later. go from 10-5, instead of 8-3, and LIVES WOULD BE SAVED.
but no. and to top it off they start high schools an hour earlier than grade schools. and commute times are almost universally longer, especially for kids in selective enrollment schools.
my youngest had an hour+ train ride to a downtown school. most of her first semester, she decided to ride the train all day rather than go to school. this started the process of a long depression, and sleep problems.

one of the high schools here (the one the youngest went to, tho after she left) proposed those changes, and the jocks, usually larks all, and the parents who needed their teens at home to watch their sibs, revolted. the plan was dropped.
a more expensive way to deal w it is to have an overlap of 1st period classes, added at the end of the day, so that kids who are owls could have a staggered schedule.

this is a big soap box issue for me. teen suicides would be slashed by just letting kids be kids and sleep when their body tells them to sleep. at least dont move the schedule in the opposite damn direction.
sleep deprivation is the one truly fixable cause of depression. but talk to shrinks and they will insist that it is a symptom and not a cause.
(also, tell that to my ex, whose one and only deep depression resulted from an abscessed tonsil that was causing sleep apnea. tonsils removed, problem solved.)

and the long term effects are not known, but i suspect that many take years, if not lifetimes, suffering under this stupid curse.