Depression as the result of rejection, victimisation, and stress: ‘it’s too much pressure on me and it just builds up inside…’ (Nicole, 17).
Many young people associated the onset of their difficulties with stressful experiences. These stressors were often to do with relational difficulties, including feelings of rejection, victimisation, and loss. Young people spoke about rejection most commonly in relation to family, and especially verbal abuse, which led to them feeling bad about themselves. For example, Nicole (17) spoke about the difficulty of having cared for her mum who had been ill, about how her mum would say to her ‘oh like you’re stupid or ugly’. She described how this affected her:
I felt sad as well for letting her down […] like I’m not good enough, I do not try hard enough…. So I can not love her enough…
Judi (17) described how verbal abuse from her aunty ‘made me feel like really down about myself and just doubting myself every time’, whilst Lizzie (17) felt that her mum was not interested in being with her once she had started a second family with a new partner. The sense that the young people conveyed of how it felt to be rejected or unwanted, especially by a parent, were sometimes extremely painful to hear. Aleksander (16), explained:
My real dad do not get in touch with me at all. Like, it was my birthday and he did not even sent a text or anything to say happy birthday. So I suppose that like, I think that sucks and it makes me feel like crap, if like my Dad doesn’t care, who will? So I suppose that could be why I’m where I am.
Some young people in our study spoke about having witnessed physical violence at home, which often seemed to be connected to a parent having been inconsistent in their life. Several linked their difficulties with having seen fights between parents. For example, Hayley (17) described how having witnessed her father beating up her mother and siblings was connected to her own difficulties with anger and aggression:
I thought it was the right thing to do so I had tried to fight with my siblings, but as I grew up I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, and I just… my anger issues are probably brought from him and what I see him doing…
Although Hayley links the domestic violence to ‘anger issues’, rather than directly to her depression per se, for many of the young people in our study, their own violent outbursts left them feeling bad about themselves, and in that sense anger and depression were linked. In some cases, a sense of anger, feelings of rejection and loss were all bound together in the way the young people made sense of their difficulties. Megan (14) described how she was ‘so angry’ about her father’s violent death when she was a child. This appeared to have left her with a sense of rejection which she linked to her own depression and anger. For others, the loss that was described might have been related to a relationship, a place or a time in their life.
For example, Oliver (14) spoke about his life changing as the result of his parents separating, which he considered to be connected to his depression. Eleni (13) also described the changes in her life, as she had lived in a different country, and had moved house and school several times. She described how the upheaval of having moved around had left her feeling:
Not really safe ‘cause like I feel like as soon as I make friends or I get settled in again that I will just like have to be, I’d have to go somewhere else, or like move somewhere else or somewhere different…
While many of the young people described one specific cause of their depression, others described a multitude of factors, and it was evident how much pain and adversity many of these young people had been through. For example, Lola (16) described the violence she witnessed between her parents, her father’s inconsistency in her life, and a number of other family difficulties. She went on to describe how this had left her feeling:
There’s loads and loads of things that are flying around in my head and I can not stop them and look at them and find out what exactly it is and what caused them, I just know that like when it happens it makes you feel sick and dizzy and just horrible…
Another common factor that young people described when making sense of their situation was to do with relational difficulties with peers. Beth (16) felt that her difficulties with self-esteem started with the bullying she experienced as a child, and when asked why she thought things had become this way, she said ‘it’s because I always feel like I don’t do nothing right in anyone’s eyes’. Similarly, for Brian (12), there was a sense of having given up on trying to make connections with peers because of the hurt they had caused him in the past:
What’s the point of like even trying to make any friends at all, if they are only ever going to hurt me, or turn their back on me?
Some young people conveyed a sense of being a victim, such as Gemma (15), who described how ‘it all started from being bullied’. She described how the bullying had started when her dad passed away, which had made her an ‘easy target’. Participants often saw this victimisation as the start of their difficulties, leaving them feeling bad about themselves and withdrawing from their peer group, which left them socially isolated.
The most common stress described by adolescents was that of school and education—and especially the increased pressure of preparing for major exams, which in the UK usually take place when young people are 16 and 18. Erhan (15), like a number of other young people in the study, described how exams ‘caused me to be depressed’, whereas for some, it seemed to be to do with a more global difficulty with school:
I think it’s mainly to do with school, I think. Because when I’m at school it’s like it’s dark like there’s nothing to do, nothing to make me feel good or I can not I do not know I just feel moody at school… I feel like school sort of brings me down…