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not just about the nature of the problem or the best kind of help to get, but even about whether there is a problem at all. Aaron, who is twenty-two, started taking antidepressants when he was twelve. “I’ve been on and off antidepressants for about ten years,” he recounted.
     
    I don’t know basically why I was put on it. I just remember one day I was at the mall, and I ran off to do something and then nobody could find me and they flipped out at me, and I reacted, like I threw a fit, and then when we got home I went up to my room and I just kind of stayed there, and my mom came in maybe fifteen, twenty minutes later after I had calmed down, and she said, “We’re going to send you to someone to talk about this,” and I had no inkling that this was happening. So I started meeting with this guy. I was in seventh grade at the time. And they recommended that I go on Zoloft.
    —Aaron, age twenty-two
    Jessica had a similar story. “I started taking antidepressants in fifth grade,” she said.
     
    And it really wasn’t me that noticed the problem. I think it was my mom, in conjunction with our family doctor. And I think that my mom was concerned because I just wasn’t happy. I was way more unhappy than your average unhappy kid should be, I guess. And I mean, nothing traumatic or horribly terrible had happened to me, so she was kind of wondering what else it could be.
    —Jessica, age twenty-four
    Unlike the people I described at the beginning of this chapter, Aaron and Jessica started taking antidepressants without passing through a crisis stage, at least not one that they were aware of. Their experiences point to one of the main things that makes using antidepressants as a child or a teenager different from using them as an older person, and that is how much weight the opinions of adults carry. At the most basic level, parents are responsible for their children’s welfare and are able to tell children what to do. Beyond that, parents’ interpretations of what is happening can make an enormous impression on children, who are likely to believe what they’re told. Aaron remembers his parents saying to him, “We’ve noticed you’re very sad, you’re very moody all the time,” and he instinctively agreed: “I was like ‘Oh, yeah, I am.’ ” And Jessica recalls that
     
    my mother said “I feel like, and the doctor feels like you’d benefit from doing this [taking medication],” and I was like “All right, whatever, you’re my mom and my doctor.” It was just kind of a no-brainer for me.
    —Jessica, age twenty-four
    Jessica has doubts about her diagnosis in hindsight. “Looking back on it, I think there may have been other solutions,” she said. “I remember feeling very lonely, and I think that was part of it. It may not have been depression as serious as my mom made it out to be. It seems like she might have—not really exaggerated, but my mom has this way of kind of getting her way from the doctor. [If] she feels that I might benefit from a medication, she’ll kind of ask him, pointing at this particular idea. She benefits from it; she’s actually still on Wellbutrin.” Aaron said that while he occasionally second-guesses his parents’ choice to put him on medication, “I trust that they probably made the decision they thought was best at the time. I’m glad I was on it, even if I still have that difficult relationship of not knowing whether I want to be on it at any given point.”
    Friction between parents and children about help-seeking can go both ways, though. I still vividly remember the day I told my friend Joshua that I was going to be working on a book about young people and antidepressants. “I wish I’d been put on antidepressants when I was younger,” he said fiercely. “Things could have been really different for me.” In our culture, adolescents are expected to be moody and to start pulling away and hiding more of their inner lives from their parents, a state of affairs