Do you sometimes worry about your child’s increasing withdrawal, gloominess or negativity?  Do you wonder if this is just a normal aspect of teen years, or if it might be something more?  You know that teens experience emotional upheaval, but you want to be sure.

This essential talk with Dr. Eva Ihle will teach parents how to differentiate between the typical rollercoaster of teen emotions, and the onset of depression.  Learn about the early signs and symptoms of depression, and how to read them in your child. Dr. Ihle will talk about the statistical occurrence of depression among teens, its link to environmental influences, changes in brain chemistry, and genetics.  She will also demystify and destigmatize depression, and describe the broad range of treatments that work – both with and without medication.  Finally, Dr. Ihle will teach parents how to address the issue with their teens, and how to provide support if their children’s friends or peers are experiencing depression.

Dr. Eva C. Ihle, MD, PhD, is a neuroscientist and board-certified psychiatrist who treats children, adolescents and adults, and is a Health Sciences Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the Associate Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Out-Patient Clinics, and attends on the Pediatric Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison service at Benioff Children’s Hospital. She has joint appointments in the Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics.

Dr. Ihle earned a medical degree and doctorate in neurobiology at the University of Chicago through their Medical Scientist Training Program. She completed a general adult psychiatry residency and a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at UCSF. In her research, she has studied social behaviors in songbirds and a mouse model for autism, as well as the mechanisms of salutogenesis in individuals under stress.