Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [79]
Some girls are depressed because they have lost their warm, open relationship with their parents. They have loved and been loved by people whom they now must betray to fit into peer culture. Furthermore, they are discouraged by peers from expressing sadness at the loss of family relationships—even to say they are sad is to admit weakness and dependency.
All girls experience pain at this point in their development. If that pain is blamed on themselves, on their own failures, it manifests itself as depression. If that pain is blamed on others—on parents, peers or the culture—it shows up as anger. This anger is often mislabeled rebellion or even delinquency. In fact, anger often masks a severe rejection of the self and an enormous sense of loss.
Depression is not an absolute quantity, but rather a matter of degree. If we picture depression on a continuum, at one extreme would be severe depression with some biochemical basis and disturbed family functioning. At the other end of the continuum would be ordinary adolescent misery. At the severe extreme, I think of a client whose family history was filled with depression and alcohol abuse, who had an alcoholic father and psychotically depressed mother. When she hit adolescence she had neither internal nor external resources to support her. She ended up on medication and in the hospital for several months. At the other extreme are psychologically healthy girls, such as Monica, who suffer as they catch on to the diminished roles women are offered. Most girls suffer depression somewhere between these two extremes.
Adolescence is a time when development and culture put enormous stress on girls. So many things are happening at once that it’s hard to label and sort experiences into neat little boxes. And there are many casualties. For example, a girl who is suffering from a mild case of adolescent misery may try to kill herself, not because her life as a totality is so painful, but because she is impulsive, reactive and unable to put small setbacks in perspective. Some girls are suicidal because of biochemical factors, some because of trauma and others because of the confusion and difficulty of the times. Obviously they need different kinds of attention, but all are potentially dangerous to themselves and must be taken seriously.
CINDY (14)
I first heard about Cindy from her school counselor, who said she seemed to be suffering from “failure to thrive.” She wasn’t growing physically, socially, emotionally or intellectually. Indeed, even her baby teeth weren’t falling out. She wandered about her classroom as if in a dream. Cindy had few internal or external resources. She had no perspective on herself other than what she was told by her critical parents and peers. At a time when most adolescents are involved with peer culture, she had no positive relationships with kids her age.
The counselor hadn’t been able to involve Cindy’s parents with the school. They worked at a truck stop and claimed to be too busy to come to staff meetings. The one time the mother had come to school, when Cindy was sick and needed to be taken home, the counselor had smelled alcohol on her breath. I asked about other resources. “There is no other family that we know of. Cindy is in a special class with two girls her age and they ignore her.”
I felt discouraged before I even met the family, but I agreed to try to help. A week later Delores and Cindy sat on my couch, a study in contrasts. While Delores was heavy and energetic, Cindy was small and childlike with tiny motionless hands. She hugged an old blue car coat to her chest as we talked.
Delores said,