With both an increased number of depressed students and an increased number of student suicides seen in the Issaquah District this year, the effects on the students are clear, yet they also beg the question—what is the cause of emotions that lead to such a state of despair?

The answer is that causes of depression are innumerable. Many factors come from the outside world; the economy, and financial stability of a person’s family; educational pressures like college tuition, SAT testing, and grades; a person’s social situation, being how often and in what ways  that the person interacts with others around them; and even basic things such as sleep deprivation.

Although there are a variety of outside causes that contribute to depression, primary factors that can lead to it are located at the root of one’s thought processes—the neurological build. This determines how a person tolerates the events that occur around him or her in everyday life and learns solutions to how he or she can cope with life events.

The neurological build of a person dictates the person’s reactions to the events around him or her. If a person is too insensitive to the events that occur in his or her everyday life, then he or she tends to underperform. People with this neurological structure do not hold on to enough of the information they receive from the events of their daily lives; this manifests itself through lack of care for others and a failure to realize how this affects his or her daily life.