Mental Health Month: Normal Teen Angst or Adolescent Mental Illness?

May is Mental Health Month. Mental illness is not an adults-only issue. Almost half of all chronic mental illness begins by age 14; three-quarters by age 24. Yet the stigma associated with mental illness prevents many teens from seeking help. The normal drama, moodiness and withdrawal from family of the teen years can blind parents to a teen’s very real distress. To complicate things further, there are sometimes medical or lifestyle issues at the root of emotional and behavioral change. We should never ignore talk of self-harm or suicide. We should never minimize a teen’s very real emotional pain. But it’s important that we take care not to jump to the conclusion that there is an emerging mental illness when changes in mood or behavior may be due to something else. The issue may be as simple as too many hours on video games or as complicated as drug addiction. Careful observation and perhaps assessment by a doctor or mental health provider are needed to make an accurate diagnosis and to determine the best treatment. Let’s look at a list of some of the common causes of concern. If your child is showing significant negative changes in a number of these issues or if there are changes in intensity, frequency and duration of any one or two of them, a mental health evaluation might be in order. However, before you panic about the possibility of mental illness, do consider whether what you are seeing are normal (though sometimes alarming) adolescent issues or an undiagnosed ...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Addictions Anxiety Attention Deficit Disorder Binge Eating Children and Teens Depression Disorders Eating Disorders Family General Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Parenting Psychology Psychotherapy Students Substance Abuse Su Source Type: news