If your teen is addicted or seriously abusing drugs, it’s highly likely that they’re depressed and self-medicating. As serious a problem as teen drug abuse and addiction is, it’s typically a symptom of something deeper going on within your teen.

Depression is as misunderstood as addiction and carries almost as great a stigma. As parents it can be difficult to admit that our kids might be suffering from depression, but if they’re seriously abusing drugs to self-medicate depression, the depression must be identified and addressed.

Depression can be difficult to identify in teens in general because some of its symptoms are simply a more severe form of some of the behavioral changes teens tend to go through. Add drug abuse to the mix and it can be extremely difficult to differentiate what might be depression and what might be the side-effects of the drugs.

Educating ourselves about depression is one way to make identifying it in our teens easier, while also increasing our understanding of what depression really is, what the effects are, and how it can be treated. Depression: Out of the Shadows is, as the website states, “a multi-dimensional PBS project that explores the disease’s complex terrain, offering a comprehensive and timely examination of this devastating disorder.” It airs nationwide on PBS this Wednesday, May 21st.