Damage
By A.M. Jenkins

     An estimated 19 million American adults suffer from depression and depressive disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Approximately 4% of adolescents get depressed each year. Up to 2.5 percent of children and 8.3 of adolescents suffer from depression beyond “just being a teenager.” William Styron exposed the adult condition in Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. Now, A.M. Jenkins has done the same for adolescent depression. If you think teenagers have nothing to be depressed about, you probably repeatedly say, “Get over it,” to depressed adults. Just pass us the Prozac.

     Teenagers are good at giving the rest of the world reality checks. Austin Reid, the Pride of the Panthers, has reached godhood in the almighty sport of high school football. He has good buddies and a hard-working loving mom, albeit no dad. Austin’s dad’s death leaves the boy with only the memory of one moment spent shaving together in the bathroom, and the antique razor passed from father to son. But all in all, Austin has a decent life. Heather Mackenzie, the most beautiful girl in town+, just noticed him. Despite a sadistic football coach who makes the team tackle players who fumble the ball in a high school athletics version of “The Lottery,” Austin is fortunate, right?

     It’s a façade. Austin dreams of fumbling the ball, and he wonders if Heather “ever feels like the glue holding that smile to her face is slowly disintegrating.” But he tells himself his life is “a gift from God. It’ll be an outright sin if you don’t snap out of feeling this way.” How many depressed adults have tried to snap out of it? It’s a harsh world and depression is a chemical illness. Jenkins beautifully illustrates the contrast between Austin’s suicidal feelings and his awkward teenage Pilgrim’s Progress, and drives the point subtly home by making the people around Austin, including his best friend Curtis and the perfect Heather as well as the adults, damaged and vulnerable too. Buy the teacher, parent, teen, friend, or high school counselor a copy of Damage. It may save someone’s life.