As discussed earlier in Chapter 2, loss is something everyone will have to grapple with, and some children experience more of it than others. Loss takes on many forms. It may be the death of a parent, sibling, loved one, or a pet. Divorce or the absence of a parent in the home is a loss. It may be leaving the first grade and a favorite teacher to go to the second grade with a teacher that doesn't click with your child. A child who gets rejected by another child or who doesn't make the team has experienced a loss. Do you see how quickly the amount of losses could add up to depression?

Childhood Loss

Children perceive loss in a fundamentally different way than do most adults. A child's concept of time is different. For a child, a loss might last from a few hours to a few days to a few weeks. Adults have the ability to understand that the feelings following a loss will ultimately go away. Why? Because adults have learned with time and experience that the pain from loss does heal. Children don't have that knowledge.

Adolescent Loss

Loss for a teenager can include the more traditional types such as the death of a loved one or a divorce. However, teens also suffer other kinds of losses that are equally as devastating.

The breakup of a relationship can often thrust a teen into depression. He thinks that this was the only girl he ever loved. He'll never meet anyone like her again. Life, as he knows it, is over. He may also begin to develop a more negative view of himself. “If only I had been good enough, more handsome, nicer, more athletic.” A teen is typically going to turn this kind of loss inward and cannot process all of the feelings that he is having.

For a female, the loss is interpreted in much the same way, but she is usually going to be even harder on herself given the amount of pressure girls are under these days. Perhaps she couldn't juggle the time commitments that a relationship and her studies warranted. While she may have decided to wait, she ended up having sex with her boyfriend who then dumped her for another girl. Maybe she became pregnant. Her desires to please her parents, her teachers, and her boyfriend led her to make choices and do things she never would have considered doing. The breakup with a boyfriend and any ensuing consequences can then be seen as immense losses, and if she is not adequately prepared to deal with these issues, she can become depressed.

Another kind of loss for a teen that is translated differently from children is the loss of hope. Adolescents, as they begin to experience more of life, begin to realize that bad things do happen. When enough horrible things happen to a teen, he begins to believe that there is no hope for a brighter future. He starts to see events and people in absolute terms rather than realizing there is good and bad present in almost every situation. The longer a teen feels this loss of hope, the more vulnerable he will be to depression.