There’s an unrelenting cause of teenage depression that doesn’t get enough attention and only Christianity can solve: a sudden revelation that one day they will die. Now, I don’t mean the prospect of their death troubles all teens. Many teens view their deaths as so far off as to be able to ignore. But for some, the realization that they’re going to die is an unrelenting cause of depression. I’ll give three examples.
Katy Perry
In a touching interview, the then seventeen-year-old up and coming pop-star Katy Perry confessed, “I’m really afraid of death actually, too. I’m afraid that I’ll be eighty, one day, and everyone I know will be passed on and I’ll just be waiting.” Perry then whimpers.[1] Katy Perry was just 17 and depressed by the prospect of her death and the deaths of those she loved. Not surprisingly, reaching superstardom distracted Perry. But in her 30s she made an album that wasn’t as much of a success. In a 2020 interview, she described what happened:
I used to really be able to, like, fix my, like, depression or my bouts of depression by just going, “I’m going to write a freaking song,” or “I’m going to do this, blah, blah, blah…. I’ll leave you in the dust. You break up with me, I’ll show you, here’s a number 1.” It didn’t work anymore. So it didn’t work… the world didn’t want to hear from me any more at that moment. They were like, “That’s enough….” And I just couldn’t get out of bed for weeks and became clinically depressed and had to get on medication for the first time in my life and was so ashamed of it. I was like, “I’m Katy Perry, I wrote Firework, I’m on medication, this is f—ed up…. I have a record coming out.” That’s how I used to solve all of my problems.[2]
Presently, Katy appears to be doing better. She’s engaged, she has a new baby, and she’s a host of American Idol. The trouble, as I point out in my book, Immortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It?, is that fame is only until further notice. Once stars are no longer famous, then they’re left staring at the inevitable.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
In her book, Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, Harvard grad and bestselling author Elizabeth Wurtzel captures the horror that some teenagers experience at the prospect of death.
The first time I took an overdose was at summer camp. It must have been 1979, the year I turned twelve, when I had thin thighs, big eyes, peachy breasts, sunburn, and an edge-of-adolescence prettiness that would have made you think nothing could be wrong. Then one day during rest hour, I sat in my bed on the lower bunk, with my friend Lisanne napping just above me, and began to read a book whose epigraph was from Heraclitus: “How can you hide from what never goes away?”
I cannot remember the name of the book, any of its characters or contents, but the quote is indelible, does not come out in the wash, has been on my mind ever since. No matter how many chemicals I have ever used to bleach or sandblast my brain, I know by now, only too well, that you can never get away from yourself because you never go away.
Unless you die. Of course, I wasn’t really trying to kill myself that summer. I don’t know what I was trying to do. Trying to get my mind off my mind or something. Trying to be not me for a little bit.
So I swallowed about five or ten caplets of Atarax, a prescription allergy medicine I was taking for hay fever. The drug, like most antihistamines, was highly soporific, so I fell asleep for a really long time, long enough to avoid swim instruction at the lake and morning prayers by the flagpole through the end of the week, which was really the point after all. I couldn’t imagine why I was being coerced into all those activities anyway—the rote motion of Newcomb, [a variation of volleyball] kickball, soccer, the breaststroke, making lanyards, all this regimented activity that seemed meant only to pass a little more time as we headed, inexorably, toward death. Even then, I was pretty certain, in my almost-twelve-year-old mind, that life was one long distraction from the inevitable.
I would watch the other girls in my bunk as they blow-dried their hair in preparation for night activities, learned to apply blue eye shadow as they readied themselves to become teenagers, as they conjured boy problems like, Do you think he likes me? I watched as they improved their tennis serves and learned basic lifesaving techniques, as they poured themselves into tight Sasson jeans and covered up with quilted satin jackets in pink and purple, and I couldn’t help wondering who they were trying to fool. Couldn’t they see that all this was just process—process, process, process—all for naught.
Everything’s plastic, we’re all going to die sooner or later, so what does it matter. That was my motto.[3]
Soon she was seeing therapists, taking Prozac and a bunch of other medications to dull the pain, and drinking heavily.
Sarah Silverman
Similarly, comedian and actress Sarah Silverman told Ellen DeGeneres that she was once a “really social kid” and “was the class clown” but suddenly depression hit her and she “didn’t see any reason to be with people.” She said she would “watch my friends at school just existing, carefree, you know, and I would be so jealous that they’re just so unaware that we’re all alone and going to die and alone behind our eyes. She said that to deal with her depression she’s been on a “low dose of Zoloft since 1994” and that’s really kept “me from the total paralysis of depression.” Nonetheless, she says, “I still have lows. I still am like a ball on my bathroom floor every once in a while.”[4]
Of course, it’s not just Katy Perry, Elizabeth Wurtzel, and Sarah Silverman. If that happened to them, then how many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of other young people (and adults!) are depressed because they see clearly—”We’re all going to die and then be obliviated.”
Of course, most young people (and old people!) try not to think about death. But as Stanford professor of psychiatry Irvin D. Yalom put it in Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death, “Death itches all the time; it is always with us, scratching at some inner door, whirring softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness. Hidden and disguised, leaking out in a variety of symptoms, it is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts.”[5]
If you Google things about teenage death anxiety or teenage fear of death, you’ll find clichés like “Think comforting thoughts” (in other words, distract yourself), or “Live in the present” (in other words, distract yourself), and “Death is a part of life” (in other words, get over it), and so on and on. My book, Immortal explains why these—and many similar strategies—fail. Now, I’ve focused on teen depression but, of course, as people age, they get ever closer to the inevitable and so adults typically become more depressed than teens about death.
There’s Great News
But, there’s great news: it is an historical fact that Jesus really did die on the cross for our sins and really was raised from the dead and that by trusting Him we can have eternal life. You. Can. Have. Eternal. Life.
But here’s a snag. Many “Christians” barely pay lip service to the prospect of eternal life being available in Jesus. For many millions of “Christians,” eternal life in Jesus is no more than a bromide, a vague hope, fire insurance—not a real comfort—and so the depressed won’t find solace in seeing quasi-Christians, CHINOs (i.e., Christians In Name Only) blather things like, “I know mom is looking down on me” or “My brother is watching.” That’s not a Christianity that will provide lasting comfort for teens—or anyone else.
It is not easy, but it is simple—you’re either all in with Jesus or you are not. Either Jesus was raised from the dead or He was not. If Jesus was not raised, then we should all get the biggest, big-screen TV we can afford and drink our brains out. But if Jesus was raised from the dead, then by making Him the Lord of our lives (i.e., deciding to do all that He has commanded—Matthew 28:20), then we really will live forever and ever and ever and ever and ever… I could go on!
Remember, the most famous verse in the Bible ends with “shall not perish but have eternal life.” For more, you might check out my post “If You’re Honest You’re Depressed (or You’re a Christian).”
This was partially adapted from my book, Immortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It?
[1] Katy Perry, “Katy Perry Uncensored Raw Talent,” Vimeo, 2001 interview with Jim Standridge, https://vimeo.com/104457629, (accessed April 4, 2018)
[2] Katy Perry, The Zane Lowe Interview Series, Apple Podcasts, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/katy-perry/id1461515071?i=1000488697153, 2020, (accessed 3-24-2022).
[3] Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed In America, (New York: Mariner, 2017), xxvii-xxviii. Emphasis hers.
[4] Sarah Silverman, “Sarah Silverman on Battling Depression,” The Ellen Show, October 24, 2015, https://www.videoclip.site/video/pZGVgl_RZ5Y/sarah-silverman-on-battling-depression/, (accessed December 10-2018).)
[5] Irvin D. Yalom, Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death (San Francisco: Wiley, 2008), 9.