Understanding Depression and Anxiety in Children During the Christmas Season: Insights from Counsellor Shawn Clarke

Several people are suffering from depression and anxiety and during the Christmas season numbers can increase significantly.

That’s according to counsellor Shawn Clarke, head of Supreme Counselling For Personal Development.

Clarke, who provides counselling services for schools across the island, said: “A lot of our children are suffering from depression and anxiety – enough for all of us to be concerned. Parents wonder why their children are depressed and many do not accept the fact that the children are depressed. But often, there is so much happening around our young people, enough to put them in a state of depression.”

Security

The professional counsellor said children were often affected by divorce; when parents are about to lose the roof over their heads and by other issues parents face from time to time. He noted that children must be given a sense of security, noting this must come from their parents.

“It is important that parents show their children that they care, not just by talking, but by their actions. They must show them it is not all talk. Even a child who loses a pet can suffer from depression. Why? Because that pet might have been the company they had in their times of loneliness or despair. It might have been who they talk to and who kept them going in their times of trouble.

“We can only understand our children when we give them a voice, when we give them the opportunity to speak up and share what they are feeling or going through.”

Clarke said the Christmas season was also a time when both children and adults become extremely depressed, sometimes because of the commercialisation of the season.

Community spirit

“The commercialisation of Christmas gives the impression that ‘everybody has, but you’ to that person who may not have much. This is where effective parenting from family members come into play. From very early, we must teach our children that ‘a little with content is great gain’. We have lost a part of Barbadians – that of sharing and looking out for each other. It still happens in some parts of the island, but Christmas time is when we need more than ever to look out and care for each other.

“In fact, we must do it year round, so it does not seem like we are giving hand-outs during the Christmas season. We must have the spirit of community, where we look out for each other. Is it a case where we forget when we wanted? When we were in need? We must see beyond family as blood relatives and see family as universal,” he said.