The amount of depression teens face these days is, well, depressing. It has become a major issue that no one takes seriously. I think one of the reasons is that everyone seems to have it, but every teen seeming to be depressed shouldn’t be a reason to ignore it. If it seems everyone has the flu, it will be investigated thoroughly. Depression should be treated the same way.

Mental illness may be in our heads, but that doesn’t make it insignificant. We take germs very seriously even though we can’t see them because they pose a serious threat. Why shouldn’t we treat depression the same way? Adults don’t realize our stressors are equal if not worse to what they went through as kids. As technology has advanced it gets easier and easier to be informed about what is going on in the world. We also see what other people are doing (which most of the time is something fun), and we get lonely or sad that we aren’t in the world experiencing what life has to offer.

Our country should be more concerned about the people they are passing the responsibility of the world to. Not only are we depressed, anxious, and worried, we are also terrified of the problems we will have to fix as adults. We have to deal with school shootings, bombings, racism, equality, LGBT+ rights, and the loss of fellow students to their own demons. We try to cope with all this, and our brains aren’t even fully formed yet.

We have asked for help and our pleas have been ignored by the people we trust most. When school shootings started happening across the country, people asked why. But when over 50% of teens nationwide spoke up about their depression, most of them were dismissed as kids looking for attention. Just because we are too young to vote or drive a car, doesn’t mean we are too young to be taken seriously.

The problems of the world that have been forced upon us are not something we should have to face alone. Teens should feel safe talking about what is going on, and yet many of us don’t because of how many times we have been brushed aside. Kids shouldn’t ever have to feel like their feelings are invalid; they should be able to ask for help making sense of their feelings. We have lost so many great minds to this disease because it has been ignored countless times. When kids are taught to never ask for help, they don’t learn the value and importance of being able to rely on others.