The Importance of Watching What You Say
For the last few decades, the United States has seen a significant increase in rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide among teens. This is a topic that is sparsely broached in school, but it may just be an imminent crisis that we must deal with before it is too late. Many people think about depression and say to themselves, “well, if I’m not depressed, there isn’t much I can do about it.” However, that just isn’t true: there are certain practices everyone can commit to every day in order to help put a dent in this crisis. So many of the people we encounter in our daily lives are struggling with things that we will never know of. The people we pass on the street, the students we talk to at school, they are all going through things that we cannot see, things that they may be going through great lengths to keep from us. The solution is not to force their live experiences out of them, but simply to watch what we say. Our words can have the effect of exalting or demeaning. It is abs...
