Anxiety and depression have grown increasingly common among teens. Still, more than half of kids with one of these illnesses get no treatment. While these numbers don’t mean parents don’t care enough to seek treatment. They indicate that many parents don’t recognize their teen has a problem. Some simply assume they can fix the problem on their own.
When your children are small, they get bumps, bruises, and illnesses that you can usually solve with magical kisses, ice cream, and maybe a new toy. When your teenager starts to show signs of a mental illness like anxiety or depression, it can leave you at a loss or in unfamiliar territory.
Your first natural inclination is always to fix the situation, and many parents go to great lengths to try to mend the illness on their own to no avail. The first real step to making things better is to understand better what is happening on a deeper level.
Anxiety is a normal human response to some type of perceived stress, and childhood is full of anxious feelings. Kids can be afraid of many things as they go through the varying stages of growing up. These anxieties are temporary phases that the child overcomes with time, or even with comfort and reassurance from a parent.
For example, a child may have terrible anxiety about sleeping in the dark. Still, bedtime stories, a teddy bear, and an attentive parent can typically solve the problem. For teens with an anxiety disorder, the emotions aren’t solved so easily; the negative emotions don’t simply go away with time, comfort, or reassurance.
An anxiety disorder is characterized by extreme fear or anxious worry. Suppose the teen can't overcome these feelings. In that case, severe emotions can impede their everyday normal life, responsibilities, or activities.
The five primary types of an anxiety disorder include:
All forms of anxiety in teens can have their own unique attributes, so it is good to educate yourself about the different types of anxiety disorders your teen may be dealing with. Some general signs of anxiety in teens may include sleeping more than usual or sleep problems, school problems, irritability, physical ailments, social withdrawal, social phobias, loss of interest, changes in personality, and changes in appetite.
Some people with anxiety disorders, a medical condition, suffer from physical symptoms that interfere with daily activities.
Nearly one of three teens between the ages of 13 and 18 will experience some type of anxiety disorder. The numbers of teens with anxiety disorders have been steadily rising for several years.
The underlying reasons for the uptick are always up for debate. However, a few of the most commonly touted factors for an upswing in teenage anxiety include:
Other individual factors can contribute to anxiety in teens as well, such as genetics, personality, brain chemistry, family situations, and more. Pointing out a single cause of an anxiety disorder is practically impossible; most teens have a series of underlying factors contributing to the illness.
It can be tempting to step in and do everything for your teen because it may be easier to just handle things on your own. However, the more you step in and take over, the easier it is for the teen to avoid making progress.
Being mindful of how you express your own fears is also important. It’s good to share personal experiences or issues with anxiety, but be careful to do so in a positive way. Maybe you both have social anxiety, for example. It can be fine to share your own struggles but also explain how you talk yourself through your struggles. Be careful not to downplay your teen’s feelings in the process; what they feel can be far different from your own personal experiences due to the nature of the illness.
Like anxiety, depression can be normal for humans to feel at certain trying times in life. Clinical depression, however, is a mood disorder that comes along with feelings of sadness and overwhelming gloom that don’t pass. True depression in teens can affect everything from how they feel and think to how they behave.
Depression is sometimes referred to as a major depressive disorder. Some of the most common subtypes of depression include:
Depression in teens can sometimes be easier to point out than anxiety simply because there can be such a drastic difference in the adolescent’s personality and usual routine. Nevertheless, the two illnesses can have overlapping symptoms as well.
The depressed teen may lose interest in things they once enjoyed, have lower energy levels, have problems at school, and experience changes in things like appetite or sleep. You may also notice irritability, social withdrawal, and other similar anxiety symptoms. A depressed teen may also show no interest in making future plans or even have physical complaints of pain and discomfort with no reasonable explanation. In the worst cases, thoughts of suicide can be an issue for teens with depression.
It’s estimated that as much as 20 percent of teens will experience some form of depression before they grow into adults. A depressive disorder is often assumed to be based solely on some type of chemical imbalance in the brain. However, underlying causes can be far more complex than just one chemical being out of kilter with everything else. Depression in a teen can have many underlying causes, including:
In addition to underlying causes, some teens can be more at risk of depression than others due to low self-esteem, bullying, peer problems, or having a learning disability.
You probably mean no harm when you say things about your teen, "feeling down." You likely won’t see the risk in explaining to people you know that you just have a "moody" teenager. However, these statements downplay what the teen is truly going through. It is far too easy to convince yourself and others that a teen is just being a typical teen because they are depressed.
You may have to constantly remind yourself and others that your teen is not making up their symptoms and what they are dealing with is a true illness. When you are accepting of depression in teens as a real illness, parenting the depressed teen in a more supportive way happens naturally.
The more a teen feels they can talk to a parent about their feelings, the more it can help them cope. Parents sometimes don’t mean to but often turn their child away when they need to talk. For instance, if your child is feeling especially depressed and they open up, simply saying something along the lines of the child should be happy because of everything they have can invalidate their feelings. Make sure your teenager knows they can come to you with anything, you will validate that their feelings are real and serious, and you are there to help them.
Having a depressed teen can mean you need to readjust some attributes of the child’s environment to make it less stressful. Kids who are clinically depressed can have lower stress tolerance than others. You may have to adjust your schedule or routine, lower certain expectations regarding things like schoolwork or chores, and even seek therapy for yourself if you have your own issues that could be inducing stress. For example, if you and your significant other are constantly fighting, seeking relationship therapy and making a commitment to maintaining a peaceful environment can make a huge difference.
Having a child with a mental illness can be all-out confusing, sometimes frustrating, and totally heart wrenching. As a parent ready with your repertoire of usual solutions to help, seeing you can’t make it all better is tough. The need to "fix" your child can sometimes get in the way of taking the right approach to help a teen struggling with anxiety or depression. In reality, the fixing should be left to professionals while you work in tandem with the pros to provide your love, support, and understanding.
In some cases, a therapeutic treatment center can be the most obvious path of support for a teen in crisis. If you feel your teen needs formal treatment, reach out to us at Zion Educational Systems to speak to a family advocate.
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