Stop Telling Kids to “Get Over It” — Depression Isn’t a Phase!

There’s a dangerous phrase floating around in homes across the world. It’s said casually, sometimes out of frustration, sometimes out of fear:

“You have nothing to be depressed about.”

It rolls off the tongue with the weight of generations who were taught to keep their heads down and power through. But for the teens hearing it, that phrase doesn’t push them toward strength. It pushes them further into silence.

You can’t “get over” depression any more than you can “get over” diabetes or asthma. You can manage it. You can learn to live with it. You can build strength around it. But telling a teen to simply “snap out of it” doesn’t just fail to help—it confirms their deepest fear:

That nobody gets it.

And when that happens, they stop talking.

Let’s be clear. Depression in teens isn’t always crying in the dark. It’s a slow withdrawal. It’s the child who used to light up over silly jokes now staring blankly at their food. It’s skipped meals, abandoned hobbies, snappy responses, or maybe no response at all. It’s a shift that happens so gradually, most parents miss it—until it feels too big to ignore.

What makes it worse is the reflex so many adults have to compare.

“I had it worse.”

“You’re lucky you don’t have to work for a living.”

“Back in my day, we didn’t even talk about mental health.”

But this is their day. Their world is louder. It’s faster. It’s flooded with curated lives, endless opinions, and unreachable standards coming at them from all sides—screens, schools, sometimes even from home.

This isn’t to say today’s teens are weaker. In fact, they’re bearing emotional loads their parents never had to carry. They’re growing up in a society where the image of perfection is constantly sold to them, where failure is mocked publicly, and where reaching out is often met with likes instead of real connection.

And yet, the most important variable in a teen’s mental health isn’t the school counselor, or their peer group, or even the algorithm.

It’s you—the parent.

The tone you set at home. The way you respond when your child says, “I’m just tired.” The moment they mention not feeling like themselves, and you choose to either lean in or laugh it off. That’s the fork in the road.

Validation doesn’t mean agreement. You don’t have to fully understand their pain to sit beside it. You don’t have to solve their darkness, but you do have to stop denying it exists.

When a teen opens up, even in small, subtle ways, that’s not a moment to fix—it’s a moment to listen. To lean in. To say,

“I don’t completely understand what you’re feeling… but I believe you. And I’m here.”

That sentence might be the lifeline they’ve been silently waiting for.

Because here’s the truth: teens don’t need perfect parents. They need present ones. They need someone who doesn’t try to erase their sadness but helps them carry it. Someone who knows that getting through is far more powerful than getting over.

You want to help your child? Start here.

Stop measuring their pain against yours.

Stop dismissing what you don’t understand.

And stop assuming that love is enough if it’s never spoken, never shown, and never softened into empathy.

Depression doesn’t need punishment. It needs presence. It needs patience. And most of all, it needs to be seen.

The Mental Wolf exists for these kids—not to medicate, not to label—but to give them back the one thing they’ve been taught to hide: their voice.

We don’t fix broken kids.

We remind them they were never broken in the first place. Please share, like and follow to keep the message alive!

- Adam Scott

Original Publish: 07/17/2025