Fighting Teen Depression with Purpose

Show Transcript

Dr. Scott Kolbaba: Fighting Teen Suicide

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Lean to the Left podcast, where we explore the key social issues of our time in the context of politics today, our topic is teenage depression and the disturbingly high rate of suicide among young people. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, suicide is the second leading cause of death for adolescents between the ages of 10 and 14, and the leading cause of death for those between 15 and 25.

[00:00:31] That's tragic, and to help us understand, we present today Internal Medicine Physician Dr. Scott Kolbaba of Chicago, who served in the Marine Corps Reserve and then went to medical school at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where he graduated with honors.

[00:00:50] Completing his residency at the Mayo Clinic, he's been recognized as a top doctor in Chicago magazine. His recent children's book, Clara's Magic Garden, an Amazon bestseller, explores a young girl's journey through depression to find her purpose and happiness. 

[00:01:12] But before we get to that, I want to urge you guys to visit our podcast, dot, lean to the left. website, where you'll find thumbnails and links to our episodes. You can subscribe there, too. And don't forget to give us a rating. Five stars would be cool.

[00:01:32] So thank you, Dr. Kolbaba, for joining us on the Lean to the Left podcast. 

[00:01:38] It's great to be here. 

[00:01:40] Hey, I understand that there was an incident in your work involving a young girl who was in a coma from a drug overdose that prompted you to join in the battle against teenage depression. Can you share that story with us, Dr. Kolbaba? 

[00:01:55] Sure, Bob. That was a quite an event. I was called to the emergency room. They call it the emergency department now, ED. And I was as I was approaching the room where I was going. I was everything was bustling and like it is an emergency room and I could hear someone sobbing inside that room.

[00:02:12] And, that gave me a funny feeling inside because I knew that somebody was in big trouble. They opened the door. There was a mom holding a little girl's hand. She was 13 years old. Can you imagine 13 years old? Wow. She was pale as a ghost look like death and she was in a deep coma from d rug overdose from depression, what I did then is the usual kinds of things. I whisked her off to the ICU. We intubated her. We pumped her stomach. We did all the stuff that you do for drug overdose. And, 13 year olds are pretty resilient and she survived. The parents, I think, suffered more than she did, actually, but I was changed, too, after that episode, to see a 13 year old girl, that's a beautiful girl. That was tragic. And I thought to myself, I'm a single doc here. I do internal medicine. And what can I do to change what's happening? And then I started to do a little research. And found some of the same statistics that you just mentioned earlier, the number of especially teenage girls, three out of five teenage girls now admit to being depressed, according to the CDC.

[00:03:13] That's a huge number. Yeah, one in three have seriously considered suicide. And so I wanted to do something because it just moved me so much to see her and to think about all the hospitals in the country with little girls and boys that are arriving in a coma or maimed or injured from a suicide attempt or from serious depression.

[00:03:34] So I decided to write a book that we call Clara's Magic Garden. It's about a little girl, and I've got seven kids, so I've got a bunch of girls, and every one of them never thinks they're pretty enough, or has enough friends, or you know how that goes. Do you have kids too, Bob? I 

[00:03:50] do, yeah.

[00:03:51] Yeah, so that's the universal complaint. And so I thought, how can I, Influence those kids and I the book is about a little girl that is like that. She doesn't think she has many friends. She doesn't think she's pretty enough and so forth. And so she has a little magic garden, which is actually our backyard.

[00:04:09] We use the our backyard as a setting for the book and she finds some seeds that she plants in the garden and the little bush grows up and the bush is plain and ordinary and no one in the garden likes the bush because it's so plain and ordinary like she thinks she is, but at the end of the season, the bush turns into a burning bush that becomes absolutely gorgeous.

[00:04:28] It's all red and beautiful in color. And so the Bush then realizes that maybe it is special and she does too. She finally comes around and thinks that, maybe I'm okay. Maybe I'm a special, I'm special too. So I wanted to get, especially girls, but boys too, to realize that they are special, that they have a purpose in this life.

[00:04:49] And but that wasn't enough for me, I'm a busybody. I like to do things in a big way, as you can see. 

[00:04:56] I read that you grow giant pumpkins. 

[00:04:59] We were talking about doing things in a big way. I do. We did have grown giant pumpkins, which is a lot of fun for the kids. And we've won actually 1 of the major festivals in the state of Illinois, 2 years running the Sycamore Pumpkin Festival and with our giant pumpkin. So it's a crazy thing.

[00:05:17] It may have been the birth control pills. We planted in the garden. I'm not sure the underground watering system that I put in for a couple 100 dollars. At any event, we also fly the biggest kites on the beach and we usually have the biggest family of seven kids that shows up on vacation. So we have a lot of fun.

[00:05:33] But, so this, the book that I wrote, I wanted to do a little bit more than that. So that's what we're doing now. I'm doing a number of podcasts and we're applying for a TEDx talk because I think it's important to realize what the problem is. And that we actually have found a potential solution and we've been trying to promote that because when I was in the psych unit talking to the nurses and the psychologists there, I said, how many of these kids that we have in the unit now have a purpose and they all piped up and they said, no one.

[00:06:07] No one has a purpose. And I thought that was a little strange. Most people have a purpose in life. They wake up in the morning excited to do something. And so I thought I'd look into that a little bit. And I found some very interesting things. There's a number of studies. The one that's called the MIDAS study, 7, 000 people were participating in the study put on by the National Institutes of Mental Health. They found that people with a purpose tend to be healthier, they tend to be happier, and they don't tend to be depressed. And I thought that was interesting because, we're pouring all kinds of money into mental health, we're trying to get mental health workers, and what's happened in a personal way is I have trouble finding psychiatrists for my patients.

[00:06:47] If someone is really sick and depressed. It takes three or four months to get someone into a psychiatrist. Mental health workers, social workers are also in a big demand. What can we do to make a difference that doesn't require more money and more personnel? And I came up with, Finding your purpose, and there's lots of support for that.

[00:07:08] There's Jack Canfield also has a big proponent of finding your purpose and feels that it keeps people healthier and less depressed. So I think if people find a purpose, kids find a purpose they are not going to be depressed or they may get out of their depression and it's not going to require meds and psychiatric work.

[00:07:27] However, that still is important because people, that are really depressed will need some medications and will need some psychiatric work with this may be a potential solution that doesn't cost anything. 

[00:07:39] Yeah. Okay, so how can it be applied to all of this in any kind of a, way that will make a difference?

[00:07:49] Let me tell you a story about myself as a kid. My parents were pretty accommodating, anything I wanted to do that was reasonable and sometimes even unreasonable, they let me do it. So I did things like collect rocks and I had a whole desk full of rocks breaking through the bottom of drawers and things like that.

[00:08:06] And that lasted for a few months. And then I got into balloons and ballooning, hot air ballooning. And they took me all around the country looking at balloon festivals and I concocted a hot air balloon idea with a barrel that was filled with oil initially, but emptied out, thank goodness, before I started the fire in it.

[00:08:22] And then took the vacuum cleaner. Put it upside, backwards and blew the air into the barrel. There were coals in the bottom and then the hot air came out one side. And I, 

[00:08:33] how old were you when you did this? 

[00:08:35] I probably, probably 10 or 11 or something like that.

[00:08:39] And the hot, and the balloon was a weather balloon, and the trouble is that it cooled off before it it it became too hot to, to fly. So those are the kinds of things that my parents, let me do. And one of the things that, that I've observed You came from a 

[00:08:51] big family too, didn't you?

[00:08:53] One, one I'm the only child, so I'm very spoiled, but I know I don't look that way. Do I? So what parents, and this has a lot to do with parents, everyone's busy these days and, what I'm, what trying to propose is that it doesn't take much for a parent to get involved with a kid and to find a purpose.

[00:09:12] What you need is to identify the kid's passion. Okay. What the what turns 'em on. And we've had various, we've got seven kids, so we've had all kinds of passions in our family. We've had writing and we've had coloring, and we've had football and baseball and all kinds of things. And a purpose is something you could dedicate your life to.

[00:09:29] That also would help others. When you're doing that what I found is that if you, if parents can get involved with the child or anyone, it could be an uncle, it can be a neighbor and find their purpose. Now, how do you talk to a kid about that? You don't, when the kid comes home from school, our kids, I can tell you a typical conversation and that is, hi, Dane, how was your day?

[00:09:49] Good. What'd you learn? Nothing. What are you doing? Nothing. What we did, we have a we live in a circular it's a street, it's a circular street outside our house. So we walk around the street, it's a half a mile, and we take a walk. It's amazing what comes out when you take a walk with one of your kids.

[00:10:06] They will then tell you what they're interested in, what their purpose is. And they'll tell you what's happening in school. And that's how you identify the purpose. You have a fishing story about that, right? Exactly. That's, I'm glad you brought that up, because You wonder how much time you have to spend with the kids, do you have to spend all your time?

[00:10:25] Everyone's busy. Do you have to spend two or three hours a day? And let me tell you the story about Fishing. I go to Phoenix quite a bit because we have four kids that live there and a dozen grandkids. So a couple years ago, I took two of the boys out fishing. Now You can imagine how many fishing holes there are in the middle of Arizona, you know I think there was one, it was probably a waste deposit or something, but anyway, it was a fishing hole in the middle of Arizona, in the middle of Phoenix, and they had the fishing poles and the two little boys, there were probably five and six took the fishing poles and no one hooked themselves.

[00:11:01] We hooked a couple of trees and we hooked a couple other things at the bottom of the pond that we fishing at. They didn't catch anything. And I thought to myself after we were done, this is a waste of time. I really feel sorry for the kids that I took about fishing because they didn't catch anything.

[00:11:15] And then what's interesting is two years later, one of the kids came up to me and he said, Grampy, I said, yes, he said, that fishing trip we took a long time ago. And I said, yes. And he said, that was the best time of my life. 

[00:11:29] Wow. That's incredible. 

[00:11:31] Can you imagine? Yeah. That's really incredible. So the point, and they've been fishing since They love it.

[00:11:36] Yeah. And so the point is you don't have to expend lots of time and energy in many cases to find a purpose or a passion for a kid. Sure. And that's you have 

[00:11:46] another, you have another example too about Sure. Playing chess. 

[00:11:51] Yeah, we we visit my other grandson who lives in Houston, and he I was just happening to mention that I was a chess player in in high school.

[00:12:00] And so he, we talked a little bit about that and how I liked to play chess and that was pretty much what we did. And then the next thing I know he's learning chess, he plays chess and now he's become a champion chess player. And it's his passion to teach others how to play chess and realize how much of an importance it is in growing up to learn rules to learn competition.

[00:12:23] And so he's so and that wasn't a very major accomplishment that I just talking about chess. So the point is, Parents and significant others can do a little bit to encourage a passion to encourage what the kids are passionate about, and then turn that into a purpose and then use that purpose to help someone else in the world like he's helping others learn how to play chess and enjoy that. So that's what seems to help prevent depression or to relieve depression and it doesn't cost anything and anyone can do it. And my purpose is to get others to realize that because it's an under recognized treatment for depression. It doesn't require Prozac. It doesn't require a psychiatrist.

[00:13:10] It just requires a little bit of time and discovering a child's purpose. And if they have a purpose they'll make they'll make it'll make a big difference in their lives. 

[00:13:19] Yeah, and it doesn't result in side effects, when you see all of these ads on TV about these drugs for for people who are, suffering from one form of depression or another, it always cracks me up because in the fine print that they read.

[00:13:39] It always says could result in serious depression, even suicide. That just is crazy to me. How, why would you have drugs like that have those side effects? It's counterproductive, is it not? 

[00:13:54] Yeah, and one of the things that we see with the SSRI class of medications is that in teenagers, especially, they can have the opposite effect.

[00:14:03] So what has happened, and there's a black box warning on the drug write up on those drugs, what has happened is that the kids are depressed, they're given one of these medications, and then they can become worse. Now, the medications can be life changing, though, and life saving. So I think There's certainly a place for all these modalities.

[00:14:21] There's a place for drugs, there's a place for psychiatry, but my point is, if people get involved, anyone can get involved with a teenager, especially if they recognize that he may be a little, he or she may be a little bit down, they can turn them, they can turn around and people can literally save lives.

[00:14:39] Okay, you, you you've adopted, what, a couple of kids from Romania, did you? 

[00:14:45] Two from Romania and one from Chicago. 

[00:14:48] Okay, how was it that you chose to adopt kids from Romania? 

[00:14:56] When my wife and I were dating and we would have these lengthy conversations in the pottery room because I was a potter as a minor in college.

[00:15:06] So I would spend a lot of time throwing pots. And we talk about what we want to do with our lives. And we said, I think we're going to have, I think we're going to have a lot to offer. These kids at some point in their future. And our goal was to raise good kids. And so far we've done okay, no one's in jail.

[00:15:25] So it's a low bar that we set at our family. And so we thought, why don't we have some of our own biologic kids. And why don't we adopt. And so We built a big house like everything else in my life, big house, big dog, big pumpkins, big kites. And yeah, I think I 

[00:15:43] saw, I read where you have a dog that's 150 pounds.

[00:15:46] That's crazy. Yeah. She's very loving. It's a Newfoundland and they're the most gentle giants, but it goes along with our whole personality here of bigness. And so we, 

[00:15:57] are you a big guy? 

[00:16:00] I'm about 6'2 I'm on a diet though, Bob, so I'll be less of a big guy in the future. 

[00:16:06] You don't look like you need to go on a diet.

[00:16:10] Of course, all I can see is your face, mostly, but nevertheless. 

[00:16:15] So Romania was a place where they were having kids that were living in orphanages. And so we went over there and looked at the orphanages and one of the things that I discovered was it's a sad, it was a sad day because we're walking toward this orphanage where they had the kids and about a block away, you could smell the urine.

[00:16:34] Isn't that amazing? Oh my. They changed, they would change the diapers about once a day when they started to get wet up to their chin. And there was a room that as a doctor was very impressive to me. It was called the dying room. And when the kids got sick, it didn't have to be anything serious.

[00:16:52] It could just be a cold or something. They would put them in the dying room and they would let them be there until they died. Now the the sink that was in the room had no soap. There was a bunch of kids and the eerie thing about that orphanage was that the kids were quiet, kids are, our kids are screamers.

[00:17:11] They, if you're not paying attention to them, but what happens in an orphanage like that is the kids don't get attention for crying. So they stopped crying eventually. And so this is an orphanage of a hundred kids or so that is silent. It was, that was the most eerie thing you can imagine. So we found two kids there that we thought would, we could provide a home for, and we said, we'll take them.

[00:17:36] And we adopted those two and then one other later on, and they've turned out to be a great joy in our life. It's been a wonderful experience. And, at this point, I don't know which ones are adopted anymore. They're good and bad and variably in there, pretty much all the same.

[00:17:50] So it's been it's been a fun. And I think We had one, when you adopt kids that are multicultural like that, you run into some problems. And one of the problems that we see with depression is bullying. And my daughter who's half black and half white was bullied on the bus.

[00:18:07] She was in grade school and it was a tremendous problem for her. And as you can probably imagine, The C. D. C. Says that people that are kids that are bullied have a two to nine times increased rate of suicide compared to normals. And so my older, the older boys in the family tend to be the ones that are the protectors.

[00:18:30] So Nathan, who is a big time football player, that was his purpose, got dressed in his football outfit with his big shoulder pads. Walked onto the bus with Jordan. And he said that Jordan's, he said that Jordan, who is the kid that's bullying you, she pointed the kid out and Nathan with his big football pads on and his big bulky body, he's also big, walked up to the kid and said, if you bully my sister anymore, you're gonna answer to me.

[00:18:57] And the surprising thing, Bob, there was no more bullying after that. 

[00:19:01] That's not surprising at all, I don't think. 

[00:19:04] So that's, We run into, the same things that I'm talking about here with depression and and bullying and and how to get out of it.

[00:19:12] What do you think parents should do if they suspect that their child is suffering from depression? 

[00:19:18] First of all, the things you look for with a child depression would be loss of interest in outside activities. They're not interested in their sports team anymore. They're not interested in reading or whatever they're doing.

[00:19:29] They lose interest in things. Grades suffer in many cases. The kid may look depressed. There's a thing that we look at in the office when we interview people and one of them is eye contact, they stop making eye contact, they look down, they feel depressed, they feel blue, and when they start talking about ruminating about death and dying and people that have died and things like that's a big red flag.

[00:19:52] One of the things we also, we often ask in the office, we always ask, as a matter of fact, when we interview a person with depression is, have you considered, doing yourself in? Have you considered suicide? And some of the, and I'm, I've been shocked at some of the answers I get, because here's a person you're interviewing, they look pretty okay, and all of a sudden they come up with something like the kid I saw a couple years ago.

[00:20:14] And he said, I'm. I've considered that. And I said do you have a plan? That's also a big question to ask. Because if a person has a plan, that makes it much more serious. And the kid said I went into my dad's study the other day. And I opened the drawer and he has a gun in his drawer.

[00:20:28] I took the gun out. And yes, it's not loaded. So I got the bullets from the other drawer and I loaded it. But then I decided that I would I just put it away for now. That kid was in the psych unit before you could know it because he was seriously suicidal. So what can parents do? Again, if it's a serious depression, you contact your doctor, you contact a psychiatrist or someone like that.

[00:20:53] But if it's something minor then I think this purpose Business makes a ton of sense to find out what they're passionate about, find out what they like to do. When I interview kids in the psych unit, I'll always ask them, what's your passion? What do you love to do? And they all have something they love to do.

[00:21:10] Like the last kid that I saw a boy liked to write. So I said to him do your parents know about your writing? No why not? I just, they're busy. I just didn't want to bother them with that. So find what turns them on. Find what turns your child on and for help them pursue that.

[00:21:28] Take them to a writing class or. If that's the case, they like writing. If they like animals, get them over to an animal shelter where they can volunteer to feed the dogs and clean up the poop and whatever it'd be, to be, to pursue their passion. And that makes a huge difference when kids wake up in the morning with a purpose, they don't tend to be depressed.

[00:21:47] Or if they are depressed, that will be go a long way and it's free. It doesn't require a psychiatrist or drugs. It doesn't apply to everyone, but I think it can make a huge difference in, in, in many people's lives. And I think if parents and significant others realize this, they can make a difference. And you can literally save a life by, by, by doing this, by paying attention to the kid's passion and purpose.

[00:22:12] Okay. 

[00:22:14] Are there enough resources available to help kids, including at school? 

[00:22:19] There are never enough resources. We're always short of resources. You can always do more, but my point is, as a society, we throw so many resources at problems and it's not always the money that makes a difference it's learning what's important and learning what's important is learning what's important to your kid or a child or a neighbor, if you recognize that. So that's the important thing. So that again doesn't require resources. Resources are great. But if we get families, strengthen families, I think is the big thing, strengthening the family and helping them realize that their kids need to have a purpose.

[00:22:57] That's what will go a long way and not require any resources. 

[00:23:00] Do you feel like school should have more mental health professionals or mental health services available for students? 

[00:23:11] That would be great. That would be great. My daughter in law is a social worker in Texas, and she sees some absolutely incredible things.

[00:23:19] And the stuff that she sees is the tip of the iceberg. She sees, the kids that have awful home situations where there's alcoholism and drugs and some really serious serious things that are happening. I think, maybe what we could do is include that in the curriculum a little bit, something about mental health and but, there's always a need for more mental health workers and resources.

[00:23:42] But again, I think strengthening the family is going to be a huge, Thing to help prevent this from happening 

[00:23:49] seems like that would also Help out with kids who are faced with dealing with all of the divisiveness that has taken place in this country today it's not up to the kids to deal with it, but they're certainly affected by it You know, I think about yeah, I think about the school shootings and how that must affect kids even kids who are not In that particular school, but in schools nearby or they have their friends who have been affected in some way.

[00:24:21] That's got to be a major cause for For this problem. Is that not true? 

[00:24:27] It is. Yeah, I think you know what we're I can think and it might be in 10 years ago, things weren't as divisive. I think blacks and whites got along a lot better, rich and poor. It wasn't a huge issue. I think what's happening in this country now is that we're are facing forces that are they're causing us to be divisive.

[00:24:48] And, it's a shame and it does affect the kids. There's no question. What also affects the kids is the home situation where the parents may be fighting, we're having lots of problems with the money situation. Now, we've got kids that are not, off and they are just working day kids and they've got both.

[00:25:05] The her daughter and son-in-Law are both working and, the money isn't coming in. And that is a great source of home strife and stress. And that affects the kids a great deal. And so there's a number of factors, but the divisiveness of. Of the country is certainly one of those.

[00:25:21] I agree. 

[00:25:22] Yeah, okay. Now is there anything more on this topic you'd like to add? Because I wanted to ask you about your other Amazon bestseller Physicians Untold Stories that you wrote. Yeah, I think 

[00:25:35] social media should be mentioned at least a little bit here, Bob, because social media presents kids that look like they're the perfect child.

[00:25:43] They have the perfect clothes. They have the perfect vacation. And everyone wants to get more and more likes. So I think that is a big part of this epidemic of depression in this country. 

[00:25:52] I'm sure that's true. Okay. Tell us about Physicians Untold Stories and that book that you wrote. 

[00:25:59] Yeah, Physicians Untold Stories is a book about miraculous experiences that happen in physicians lives.

[00:26:04] Now, I happen to think that miraculous cures are a little boring these days, so I don't, I didn't include except for one, but it's about physicians. Let me just give you an example of a story. There's a friend of mine who's an orthopedic surgeon who's also a trauma surgeon and and again, Doctors were hesitant to tell these stories because, these are ordinary docs that have regular successful practices, and they don't want people to think that they're strange or bizarre or have these permutations but this physician that I know was skiing in Colorado with his wife and his wife's sister and they decided to go on a mountain that they've never been on before and they When they got to the top of the mountain, a blizzard hit.

[00:26:45] The temperature went down 40 degrees. The snow was coming down so hard that they could hardly see what they were doing, but they had to ski down. So they started skiing down and as they were skiing, they came across the grove of trees and they had to go to the right or the left. Now, Steve was a surgeon that went one way and the girls went the other way.

[00:27:03] I think Steve expected the girls to follow him like the nurses do with everyone else. But they were at the other side of the grove of trees. So Steve realized that he had to ski through the grove of trees. And he's an expert skier. That wasn't a problem. Ski on five feet of powder snow. And that, but he got this funny, strange feeling in the center of his chest that he was being called to do something that was beyond the usual.

[00:27:24] And so he stopped skiing and he took his skis off and then he didn't know what to do. So he started to walk up the mountain in the opposite direction from where the girls were waiting for him. He climbed up and up and he got to a tree and then under the tree is a big tree well, and when he looked down he knew why he was there, there was a skier that hit the tree was unconscious being covered by snow.

[00:27:47] He was almost dead at the time, because Steve was a trauma surgeon he knew exactly what to do. He knew that he was in shock because he could feel a 3d pulse. He called for anyone skiing down the mountain, one of the last skiers. Heard his cries and came to help him. Got the ski patrol, they hauled the shockey skier off to the hospital.

[00:28:07] And he survived. And I, I said to Steve, what did you think about that, Steve? And he said if you don't believe in something above that controls this I don't know what you believe. And so he saved the skier's life. He splinted a broken leg that the skier had with a tree branch and some of his clothes.

[00:28:24] And the orthopedic surgeons at the hospital were impressed with his ability to splint the leg and the field like that. So that it's a book of stories like that, that give you goosebumps. And I couldn't believe that the doctors had these stories, but they never shared them except with me in this book.

[00:28:41] Wow, that's amazing. I'd love to see that. That's just great. All right. Anything else you'd like to add? 

[00:28:48] I think just again reiterate that parents and significant others can make a difference in kids lives and be aware of what the passions are for the kids and help them discover their purpose.

[00:29:01] Well, Dr. Kolbaba, thank you so much for being with us today on our podcast. I do appreciate it. I enjoyed talking with you. You're a big guy and you got big things going on in your life, and I am grateful that you you shared them with us. So thank you. 

[00:29:16] Thanks, Bob. 

[00:29:17]