Hope OP comes back. 
I’m the original poster. First and foremost, we are concerned with our son being safe and healthy. He started meds 6 weeks ago and they have helped improve his sleep and mood. His grades are good, and he just got another report card today with a 4.2 GPA. I think our concerned is two fold: when do we provide him support and when do we challenge him? Challenge and activity are good for depression and anxiety. (I’ve worked I the psychiatric field as a drug rep.). He has no interest in college or work and we are mainly concerned with helping him find a passion. He is welcome to recover at home, (he is a high school junior) and he can live and home and go to school but we need some forward momentum. I don’t know if any of you have had experiences like this with juniors/seniors and how it resolved itself. He is under the care of a counselor, pediatrician, wait listed for a psychiatrist. We are doing everything we can to help him be better.
We are most concerned about his lack of interest in the future.
It breaks our hearts for him.
Dustyfeathers and others gave suggestions for volunteering or something like that during a gap year. He could even do something unstructured – likes animals? volunteer at a shelter, that kind of thing.
But if you establish that a gap year is an option, you might not have to decide what it consists of just yet. Maybe plant the idea and let him think about it. He might come up with something he wants to do between now and then.
He is not interested in volunteering. We would support him taking a gap that involved a combination of expericencsz. He doesn’t want to “do anything.” The is from a kid who does well in his school work and developed a popular online gaming magazine. He doesn’t want to "do anything.
We are at loss.
What will be will be. The future will happen. What is the rush. You need to be most concerned about his mental health not about his lack of interest in the future. He likely needs to avoid seeing your anxiety and disappointment. Seeing that can’t be good for his mental health. Give the therapy time. Let him relax. Ease up on the pressure. Let him try to be happy today. Tomorrow let him try to be happy tomorrow. One day at a time. There is no future, only a present. Win today.
Just keep supporting your son as he recovers. The passions will return when he is no longer depressed or at least is more on the mend.
Please remember that depression isn’t the future he imagined for himself either. It is going to take time for him to process this. It is probably taking a ton of effort to keep going to classes and stay current with the work when he would rather shut everything out. I give him a huge amount of credit for keeping the GPA so high.
School is a 7 hour large group activity. If he is at all introverted he may need time at home to decompress at the end of the day.
Very few students have an actual “passion.” That is highly over rated. They only know what they have been exposed to in high school or in the community. I never would have thought what I would major in college if I had to go by my high school interests.
Just help him find things that make him laugh.
Give him lots of love and acceptance. I took 2 years off before college and you know, no one cares!
He is depressed. Part of that for many people is not being interested in the future (or even the present!) To me, your role here is supportive. He is a junior. He has time. Try and live in the moment for a little while. It’s hard, no doubt.
I am a fairly successful, upper-middle-class adult and I don’t have a “passion” other than my family. I have hobbies and interests. I was an excellent student in HS, a good student in college, and I’ve had a career that I find pretty interesting. It has no direct relation to my college major, BTW. But I find my work interesting more often than not and it pays well enough that I have a nice life. But I wouldn’t do what I do for a living if I didn’t get paid for it–and in my mind at least, having a “passion” for your job means that you’d do it for free. Very few people have that luxury. Expecting it of a teenager is comptely unrealistic.
@hannuhylu I’m sure you’re not purposely doing this but you’re kind of coming off as really insensitive.
Sure, there are people who are just lazy but they’re generally not the ones who are pulling in a 4.2 GPA. I’m sorry your daughter took that track, and maybe there were depressive issues that weren’t addressed a long time ago, but it doesn’t seem relevant to the OP’s situation… except maybe to show what can happen if these mental health issues go unaddressed.
OP, please just have patience and give things time to work. I was hospitalized in my junior year of high school because my depression got so bad that I essentially stopped eating and my weight bottomed out. I’m now in my mid-20s and in a top-ranked PhD program. I give so much credit to my parents who put my health first and likely saved my life.
Meds and therapy take time to work. It’s not like an infection where it’ll clear up in a few days with antibiotics. Once he stabilizes, then you go from there.
Romanigypsyeyes,
What things that your parents did were most supportive for you? We are trying to talk music with him and watch shows with him. Just be there.
OP, sorry for your struggles. I get that you are trying to get him interested in something - it is a vicious cycle, one feels too depressed to do anything, but if they don’t do anything, that is another driver of depression. Volunteering is hard if you aren’t even taking care of yourself, it is hard to give to someone/thing else. I’m gonna offer a less serious path of suggestions…Does he like music? …it is never too late to pick up an instrument- for fun, not for a college app. Or does he have a pet? What about things like taking golf lessons, or archery - things where you can go to the range on your own and not rely on others to have fun…
Just because your kid is 17, it is not too late to find an interest you can share together, in fact, it can be the perfect time. Does he like to build or fix things? Are either of you handy to lead the way? You can be supportive, but you can also find ways to be involved with him. It is not too late to find your own adventure time together - even if it is just watching food network together and trying to cook something from there.
With depression, it’s not just a matter of finding a hobby, it’s a loss of interest in things that used to be important, add meaning, be fun, etc.
Listen to the recomendations of his mental health team and hopefully he can be seen by the psychiatrist soon. Hang in there!
I wasn’t implying that a hobby would fix things and certainly understand the seriousness of depression, but OP seems too interested in gpa and all those type of trappings in today’s society. I was suggesting the parents be interested in other things with him and share in more activities together. Too many parents are only focused on grades and measurable achievements, while forgetting they can still be an active part of their life.
Depression is very common. It seems to be more common among very intelligent and/or creative people (a number of very famous people have suffered from it). A professor that I know told me that he thinks that the majority of the smartest and most thoughtful students that he has advised, have at some point in their life had some issues with depression (I am not sure if “majority” is actually right, but it is what he told me).
It can take a while (many months) to get the treatment right. Stick with it. Be aware that the first set of meds might not be the best ones, dosage sometimes might need to be varied, and there may be a need for some experimentation before they get it right.
Probably university should wait until the depression has been dealt with and is stable. Sitting around the house doing nothing might be needed very short term, but in general is not a good way to deal with depression. If it becomes necessary to take a gap year before university then your son should find something that he likes to do, even if it doesn’t pay (such as volunteering somewhere). However, you have some time before the college applications need to go in, so there is a good chance that you can get this resolved by then. If he does need a gap year, remember that life is not a race, and in general we are not eager to get to the end.
One thought: Come next fall if he is reluctant to apply anywhere, then you might want to suggest that he send in a few college/university applications, but with the understanding that if he doesn’t have to go if he doesn’t feel up to it. Quite often universities if asked will let a student defer for a year.
Personally I am a bit leery of having students who have a history of depression going to exceptionally difficult and challenging universities (MIT or Harvard might not be the right choice). On the other hand, he is smart and won’t want to go to a too easy university either. Getting the right balance might require some thought. The good news is that there are a lot of very good universities in the middle sort of range. This is probably something to think about but I don’t know if there is any way to be sure until a student is at a university or college in terms of whether it is academically the right fit. In any case, don’t get hung up in a desire to go to a “big name” university. Instead look for a “good fit”.
Someone who is depressed cannot get excited about the future. Heck, they can’t get excited for the present.
Often what is popular is a “gap year”. This is a year between HS and college where a student can decompress and experience things that he/she may not have the luxury of time for experiencing it in the future. An example: He could go to Austraila and live and work and travel. Or do an internship near home. Volunteer to work in Africa? Work at a restaurant near home?
There are 2 ways to do gap year: 1. Apply to college. After getting accepted, ask if you can take a gap year, before starting at the college., so you start one year later, and the college keeps your spot for you. Most colleges will say yes. 2. Do no apply to college. Start the gap year and then apply to college during your gap year. The problem with this approach is that it might be difficult to apply if you are away doing something exotic.
If you start realistically discussing with him to consider a gap year, maybe it would improve his depression? or maybe not. But you could try it and see. Sometimes people get depressed bc they don’t see any way out of their trapped life.
@browndeck, I’m not saying this is what is going on, but I’ll add it to the mix. Sometimes when adolescents are feeling stressed their stress expresses itself as seeming apathy. It’s as if their systems are so overloaded they shut down. It could be that as a kid with high academic stats he’s feeling pressure (not necessarily from you-could be at school or just society in general) to excel in the college process. It may feel emotionally safer to say “I don’t care about any of this” than to worry about getting into some sub-10% acceptance rate college or make a grand plan for work worthy of a 4.2/98% kid. And of course this may all be subconscious and none of it may be apparent to him, making it harder to address.
@browndeck It’s hard to give advice without knowing all the facts, but there is no need to rush your kid or motivate him. Just show him you love him and let him know you are there for him. Listen to him when he tries to say something without being critical. Give him a hug every day. Our son is also a sensitive kid (only kid), and in sophomore he felt lost and purposeless. He gradually found himself, got motivated and will be attending Stanford next year. I feel it’s very important to give him his own space; he deserves to be lazy and unmotivated if he wants to. It sure is impressive that he gets 4.2 gpa even when he’s not all that motivated.
Camus wrote (?) that when kids reach 16 years old, some start asking whether life is worth living, so this period is not easy for them either.
Anyway, I told my kid if you don’t like Stanford for some reason and don’t want to be there, feel free to leave and do something he likes. I rather keep my son than a graduation diploma from Stanford. I myself couldn’t wait to get out of college when I was young. I am so glad I am done with attending classes for a diploma. I think I spent more time at college library reading books than attending lectures. lol
@browndeck Your starting to ask good questions. I really recommend that you see your own therapist so that you can get professionals to answer your questions and help YOU cope while allowing you to provide the maximum support for your son in need. This will be ok.
@ClassicRockerDad, going to see a counselor is EXCELLENT advice!! Should have thought of it myself. That helped me tremendously when my son was doing poorly. OP, my son has schizoaffective disorder - a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I’m posting his story here (with his permission), so you can see what we’ve been through. In his case, we should have brought him home from his out-of-state school quicker. We could have lost him. I was in so much denial I didn’t see it. I know he’s a more extreme case than your son, but there are lessons to be learned. Note that this is a journalist’s blog - CC has given me permission to post it. http://dianeatwood.com/logan-price-mental-illness/