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Hear me, Understand me, Support me: What young women want you to know about depression

"I don't want to be treated. I want to be heard."

-VALIDITY participant

This phrase captures succinctly the overriding theme of the young women's voices heard throughout the VALIDITY project and certainly in this guide.

When asked for their ideas about depression, young women don't, for the most part, identify physical "symptoms" that can be treated with a prescription. They call attention instead to factors outside of themselves, factors that may be influenced in a number of ways and that focus on preventing young women from slipping into clinical depression. Throughout this guide, young women's words clearly and consistently reflect what they think about when it comes to depression - including how society responds to depression, how to identify depression and the social factors contributing to depression. These issues have been documented and validated in numerous research studies:

• Stigma
• Recognizing depression
• Relationships
• Family communication and dynamics
• Cultural expectations
• Racism
• Homophobia
• Ableism
• Friendship, intimacy, fitting in and peer/social pressure
• Sizism, body image and the media

In this section, we hear about each of these issues from diverse young women. As a whole, they represent the significant challenges that many young women face, often daily, from early adolescence to young adulthood as they strive to understand themselves, their bodies, their minds and their fit in a variety of societal settings. The complex layering of identities and roles often prescribed by society is referred to as intersectionality, and it poses specific and unique challenges for each young woman.

As you read through the stories and quotes from young women, consider that although they may be speaking about one issue, they are often trying to sort out challenges that result from multiple identities and pressures. One young woman, for example, writes of her experience as a young lesbian with a disability seeking help from the mental health services system. Others talk about the intersection of class and race, peer pressure and ethnicity, religion and culture. As service providers - physicians, therapists, teachers, etc. - we need to keep in mind that young women come to us with this complex diversity of identities and resulting needs.