Keep calm and listen to white noise
Sometimes you want to listen to something while you’re reading, working, or trying to relax but music is too distracting. Try a “white noise” app or website!
Driving Agreements
Last week we mentioned how it can be tough to have a conversation with your child about driving. Here’s another video about why it is so important to have that talk. Check out the checkpoints program and get started with safe driving today!
Compassion
“There are many ways in which we can become more compassionate in our daily lives. Even little things like becoming less judgmental, allowing someone else to be right and practicing random acts of kindness can make an enormous difference in our own lives and in the lives of others.” – Richard Carlson
Have you practiced a random act of kindness lately? How did it make you feel? How do you imagine it made the other person feel?
Dangers of sharing your location via social media
Social media is highly used among adolescents and teens. While there are many perks to social media, it also has it’s dangers. For example, some social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., will share your location without you even knowing. This could be troublesome for your privacy as well as your safety.
What are some of the dangers of sharing your location online? And how can you prevent sharing too much information?
Continue reading Dangers of sharing your location via social media
Antidepressant Warnings
Its important to understand the risks of taking any medication. But its also important to understand where those risks came from.
For antidepressants, there is a black box warning on antidepressants for children and young adults – which is a warning put out by the Food and Drug Association meaning that it might cause serious injury.
This warning is based on research studies which looked at the possible risks of taking an antidepressant. The research studies done on medication are usually randomized controlled trials. The researchers will set certain rules about who can be in the study. Then once they agree to be in the study, the person is randomly selected to either get the real medicine or a fake medicine (placebo) which looks the same – or sometimes a different medicine. In the best studies, neither the patient nor the healthcare provider evaluating how well they are doing know which medicine they received. (See this link for more information explaining clinical trials.)
Is it serious?
It can sometimes be tough to figure out how serious a mental health problem is – especially in the beginning for a teenager. If you try to think about physical health problems, sometimes there are different tests to help figure it out – blood work, images, math equations taking into account different things like how old you are, what other health problems you have, etc. Then the doctor might come back and say,
listen if you don’t take this medicine, you’re probably going to get diabetes.
Quote of the Day
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark and professionals built the Titanic. – Unknown
When have you tried something new that scared you? When has your adolescent? How did you encourage them?
Need a minute?
Are you feeling especially anxious or sad today but can’t get away from a screen? Try going to www.calm.com and taking a minute for yourself.
What do you do when you’re feeling especially anxious? Have you shared that with your youth? Let us know in the comments.
What Is Your Emoticon?
– by MeditateZEN
What’s your emoticon?
Really, what is it?
If you read through your last year of posts, what emotion do you exude the most?