Why is Child Suicide on the Rise?
Child suicide is a tragic topic, especially if you or someone you know has lost a young family member or friend to suicide. Discussing child deaths by suicide is a heartbreaking subject, but it's important to answer the question "why is child suicide on the rise?" In this article we'll explore the sad epidemic of child suicide. We'll look at child suicide statistics including child suicide rates by state, possible reasons why child suicide is on the rise and a few action steps you can take to fight against this serious and growing issue. Child suicide statistics Child suicide is [...]
How to Talk to Your Family about Your Child’s Mental Illness
Open communication can help family members understand your child's mental illness. Learn more about how to talk to family about your child's condition.
Building Healthy Self-Esteem in Your Kids
Being a parent is hard — not only do you have the responsibilities of feeding your kids, helping them with homework and making sure they get to practice on time, but you're also responsible for fostering mental health and self-esteem, encouraging good behaviors and steering them in the direction of morally upright decision making. Any parent can tell you there's no instruction manual on how to do these things; every child is different, with unique personalities and experiences. But there are actions you can take as a parent to help build self-esteem and give your child tools to develop strong [...]
Over-Diagnosis and Prevalence of ADHD
Attention deficit/hyperactive disorder, or ADHD as it's more commonly known, is a mental health condition that includes persistent problems with sustaining focus, high-energy behavior and impulsive decision-making. This disorder can affect someone in childhood and cause issues into adulthood if left unaddressed and untreated. While ADHD-type behaviors are common among children, ADHD diagnoses seem to be given out much more frequently than necessary. It most often happens in conjunction with the school environment and is too often used to medicate children who struggle to assimilate into a school environment. Educators, medical professionals and parents alike are questioning why the diagnosis [...]
Four Common Teen Mental Health Disorders and How to Spot Them
Parents of teenagers often grumble that moodiness underlines the behavior of their teen children. While all adolescents go through serious emotional growth in the teen years and much "angsty" or rebellious behavior can be considered normal, parents are often left wondering whether temperamental behavior is actually a sign of something more. Teen mental health is a growing concern, and as more people become aware of how widespread psychiatric disorders are at this age, more support and resources can be directed toward vulnerable youth. If you're a parent or adult close to a teen who is expressing symptoms of distress, [...]
3 Ways to Support Teens with Mental Illnesses
The teenage years are fraught with confusion, a desire for independence, high emotions, changing hormones and a plethora of other challenges. As if growing up on its own isn't hard enough, being a teen faced with a mental health disorder can feel like an added burden to an overwhelming life. If you are a parent, coach, teacher, mentor or work with youth in any capacity, mental illness in teens has likely affected your interactions. In this tricky phase of brain development and personal growth, you'll need to adapt to meet teens where they're at and handle situations differently than you [...]
How to Spot 5 Signs of Depression in Teenagers
Being a teenager is tough, and having to parent a teenager comes with struggles, too. The adolescent years are fraught with difficulty. From brain development to insecurity and social pressure, moody and emotional behavior and quickly developing personalities. In this time period when behavior is changing so rapidly and sporadically, sometimes it can be hard to notice whether depression is at the root of these changes or if they're normal developmental shifts. Although it may be easy to discount teen behavior as characteristic of their age, depression is surprisingly common among adolescents. The U.S. Library of Medicine estimates that one [...]
