For a parent, a child’s academic achievement might seem like a simple and easy measure of their well-being. You might assume that a strong performance in academics is underpinned by stable mental health, self-confidence and self-esteem, and supportive relationships with friends.
Teenagers and adolescents with eating disorders usually over-evaluate their shape and weight. Instead of placing their self-value in different aspects of their identity and personality, all or almost all of their self-worth relates to their body. Behaviours like body checking may reinforce a young person’s distorted beliefs about their own bodies, increase body dissatisfaction, and cause them to place even more self-value in their shape and weight.
many people – including professionals – assume that BPD is mainly experienced by girls and women. This means that many boys and male adolescents with BPD may go unnoticed, unable to access the treatment they require and deserve.
In Sri Lanka, mental health problems are common among young people. Children and adolescents may have emotional or behavioural problems that affect their quality of life and the way they relate to others.
rom our centre in Indonesia, we offer specialist, dedicated youth mental health support for children and adolescents, in residential and outpatient settings. As neighbours of Jakarta, we’re able to offer outpatient follow-up psychiatry to families at our centre, as well as to make the trip to Jakarta ourselves to provide treatment close to home.
Sleep is an essential part of both mental and physical wellness. It’s also important for a young person’s development, supporting physical and psychological growth. Among children and adolescents, a lack of sleep is associated with impaired daytime functioning, fatigue, depression, anxiety, decreased academic performance, and an increased risk of developing substance use disorders.
Young people with OCD experience obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwanted and intrusive thoughts, feelings, and impulses that lead to distress and anxiety. Compulsions are actions that young people carry out to try and cope with or stop their obsessions.
When young people experience sexual harassment, it can affect how they perceive themselves, their appearance, and their bodies. It may cause them to place more of their self-value on their appearance or their body shape and weight. They may become increasingly dissatisfied with their bodies or ashamed of the way they look.
Experiences of trauma are common among children, and possibly even more so among adolescents. Young people may experience different forms of abuse, violence, and accidents, or survive wars and disasters.
Adolescence is a time of change. Some of these changes are outside a young person’s control, but others require making decisions. That might be what to do after leaving secondary school, which subjects to study, or decisions about relationships with others.
When a young person develops very low self-worth, they can feel like they don’t deserve to have a clean and tidy room. If they feel hopeless about life, or like nothing has meaning, they might feel like there’s no point in keeping their space organised. Fatigue, another common symptom of depression, can leave young people struggling to find the energy to complete even simple self-care tasks.
Before teenagers begin to reprocess traumatic events, they have to be able to access these memories, thoughts, and emotions safely. The preparation phase of EMDR supports teenagers in developing distress tolerance skills that help them cope with the pain connected with traumatic memories. It also helps them to access suppressed emotions and feelings in their bodies.
In this blog, we look at how narcissistic abuse from one parent to the other impacts the family system, leading children to take on the role of parents. We also outline the long-term harm this can cause for young people’s mental health.
