If you are concerned about the mental health of your teen, there are a number of things you can do to help.
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Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to get professional help.
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Research professional sources of information, including websites, books, and journals. Be careful of non-professional sources of information, particularly those that tend to sensationalize.
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Listen to your child empathically and without giving advice (unless asked for, and even then, give advice only sparingly).
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Validate your teen’s feelings, even when difficult to relate to from your own experience. Validation does not mean agreement. Responses such as, “So it seems to you that …” in fact indicates that you see things differently, but that you understand how your teen is viewing the situation.
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Avoid questions or accusations that blame or shame your child. Chances are your child already feels “different” and blames him or herself for the problem.
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Lower your expectations of your teen while he or she is dealing with the problem.
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While being understanding, do your best to avoid colluding with your child’s illness. For example, don’t pretend something is normal when it is not, such as washing hands for hours every day, biting fingernails until the fingers bleed, inability to sleep more than a few hours each night or the desire to sleep far beyond normal physiological needs, and the like.
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Remember, your teen may be the last person to see the problem, and often will not be aware of improvement until long after it is obvious to you.
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Don’t blame yourself.
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Don’t take full responsibility for resolving the problem. It takes a myriad of factors to create or to resolve a debilitating mental health condition. Frankly, it’s grandiose, as well as counter-productive, to think you could have caused your child’s problem by your actions alone, or to think that you can insure its resolution.
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To the best of your ability, remain hopeful and calm. Your child will benefit greatly from your calm approach and confidence in him or her.
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Don’t listen to horror stories from others, including relatives and friends. Tell them what’s helpful and what’s not helpful to you.
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Monitor the use of medications. Teens are notoriously non-compliant.
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Help your teen process his or her experience while simultaneously holding out the belief that things can and will improve.
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Pay particular attention when your adolescent is in a period of additional stress, such as beginning middle or high school, during puberty, when struggling academically, or when social connections aren’t being satisfactorily made.
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Reduce the number and/or the intensity of stressful situations for a while. One way to view most mental health problems is that the teen is temporarily overloaded with stress, and is responding to it, usually unconsciously, by shutting down (depression), becoming hyper-alert (anxiety), and other symptoms.
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Remember that adolescents are usually loath to ask for help because their culturally and biologically appropriate goal is to become independent. Offering support of any kind must be done with the understanding that it is a developmental contradiction to what the teen is feeling and wanting. Suggestions are often easier for the adolescent to accept when coming from an admired teacher, friend, or relative.
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Remember that it is normal for your teen to experience emotional ups and downs. Only if a difficult period becomes prolonged and begins to interfere with important academic or social aspects of his or her life is it appropriate to intervene.
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If your son or daughter is falling seriously behind academically, get help before things get worse. Without blaming, talk to your son or daughter about your concerns. You may want to ask a school academic advisor for help.
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Remember the three basic physical requirements for emotional wellbeing: sufficient sleep, reasonable nutrition, and exercise. Nothing else works well if these bodily needs are not being met. Talk to your teen in a straightforward, adult fashion about the importance of taking care of one’s self physically, and the detrimental effects of not doing so. If he or she continues to self-destruct by eating too much junk food, being sleep deprived, or not engaging in some kind of regular physical exercise, tell him or her that you want to respect his or her independence, but if he or she continues to ignore their physical well being that you will intervene. Then do it.
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Look at your own demands on your child. If your behavior or words indicate that you’re expecting perfection from your child, lighten up. Don't live your life through your child.
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Gently challenge the catastrophic thinking that is so characteristic of teen thinking by comments such as, “At times like this, it’s impossible to even remember that you …” - ever had a friend, ever made a good grade in school, were ever invited to a party, etc.
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Use humor whenever possible, but make sure your teen thinks it's funny. Sarcasim and other biting comments are sadistic ways of relating, and should not be a part of your "humor."
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Show your teen that you believe in him or her. And remember, chances are they’re going to grow up to be very similar to you, no matter what they have to go through to get there.
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And lastly, take care of yourself, mentally, physically, psychologically, and spiritually. Get professional help and advice for yourself when needed. Consider joining a self-help group. It’s very healing to know that you are not alone.
Leon Pyle, PhD
