According to a recent government survey of child and youth health, around five per cent of young people over the age of twelve suffer from a major depressive illness. Sources of such depression, according to the survey, include stressful events, trauma and heredity. Increasingly, the origin of the illness remains unknown. These disconcerting figures indicate the need for intelligent and accessible discussion about mental health in young adult literature. Both GriEVE and What Does Blue Feel Like? oblige. The first investigates the painful mechanisms of grief and mourning; the other, clinical depression triggered, amongst other things, by abortion.
GriEVE by Lizzie Wilcock
Scholastic, $20 pb, 371 pp, 9781741690163
What Does Blue Feel Like? by Jessica Davidson
Pan Macmillan, $16.95 pb, 323 pp, 9780330423076
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