You are listening to Feeding the Mouth That Bites You with Ashley Parrish and Jessica Pfeiffer.

A weekly podcast guide on parenting teens and launching them into the world.

As always, we are joined by psychologist and author, Dr. Ken Wilkes.

Hey, everyone, and welcome back on today's episode.

We'll be discussing depression and teenagers.

I'm your host, Ashley Parrish,

and I'm joined by my co-host Jessica Pfeiffer. Hey there. And Dr. Ken Wogas.

Hi, kids. So Ashley, depression is something that affects people at all different stages of life,

but we really want to focus in on teenage depression today.

And I know that it affects a lot of families. It's not just a one person problem. It affects the whole family when someone's depressed. So Dr. Ken, would you start out with giving us a

definition of depression so we can clarify exactly what we are meaning here. Sure. And so as you can

imagine, it's pretty common for parents to bring their teenager in and among the concerns they have

is, is my teenager depressed. And so, you know, I'll often sit with that teenager after the parents

have left and I'll say, so do you think you're depressed? And as you can

imagine, most of them are like, no. And I'll say, well, let me ask you this. You know, depression is not

sadness. It's more like tired anger. It's like, do you ever have that feeling like, man, if I had the

energy, I'd be miffed, but just forget it.

And, you know, and that teenager will go, well, yeah.

And, okay, let me ask you this.

Do you ever get bored?

I don't mean like yawning bored.

I mean like, you know, let's go.

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