Grrr!—Irritability And What It Means

Have you met adolescents who seem irritable constantly? Does that description fit your child? Nothing ever seems to go right for them. They are always slamming doors or talking back. You feel like they should be really happy about something and instead they just seem pissed off. What’s their deal?

You understand that sometimes some things just don’t work out. Some days are just rough. But adolescents who have depression may face these feelings every day. And they can’t figure out why they feel like this.

It’s called irritability. And it can be a major part of adolescent depression. Sometimes irritability makes depression hard to identify in adolescents, who get nasty labels attached to them all the time, like “angry,” “uncooperative,” “insubordinate,” “impolite,” “antisocial.” But underneath it all is this feeling of irritability that they can’t shake off. And they don’t understand why it’s so persistent.

Continue reading Grrr!—Irritability And What It Means

Tips to Help You Through a Breakup

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.

Whether it is a breakup with a friend or a romantic partner, everyone can agree that breakups are the worst. I have had a difficult year in which I have experienced both a friend breakup and a romantic one, but I have learned some things along the way that I can share with others to hopefully help them, too.

Continue reading Tips to Help You Through a Breakup

Back from the Bluez: Behavioral Strategies that Manage Depression

Slacklining is a popular activity among the young people in our parks, and it builds physical and emotional strength and resilience.

Depressive symptoms can make people feel tired, even first thing in the morning when they wake up. They may also feel a lack of energy and motivation—so all the activities of work and fun begin to pile up, undone. When they look at their undone work and all the fun they’ve missed, they can feel sad and overwhelmed, leading to a spiral of feelings of guilt, uselessness, and failure. And so they miss out on even more work and more fun, and the cycle perpetuates itself.

One way to break out of this cycle is just beginning to increase activity levels, bit by bit.

But when you’re overwhelmed and have so much to catch up on, where do you even start?

Continue reading Back from the Bluez: Behavioral Strategies that Manage Depression

High Schoolers of “Stand Together” Talk about Social Media Stress

Two days ago we ran a blog about Stand Together, a project to educate other students at their schools about the challenges of mental illness and substance use disorders, and to break the stigma of talking about mental health in ordinary conversation. That blog was about middle-schoolers. Today, we talked to the high-school students at their annual celebration of their program’s achievements at the Heinz History Center.

We talked to them about how social media throws their mental equilibrium off balance. And what strategies they employ to take care of themselves—and others.

What are the stresses they experience on social media?

Joking About Violence

“The worst is when people joke about school shootings,” one sophomore girl says, and her three friends nod. “If they don’t like a particular teacher, they’ll say, ‘That teacher is why people shoot up schools.'”

“And other people joke about hurting themselves or say it casually, like just saying it doesn’t matter,” another girl said.

“How do you respond?” we asked.

“I tell them straight up that it’s not right to talk like that,” the first girl said. “I say that those people who were in the shootings were really hurt, and that those things really happened, and you can’t joke about it—it’s not healthy.”

“And that if you really feel like you’re going to hurt yourself or someone else,” the second girl said, “that you need to talk to someone who can help—like, right away.”

“Where did you learn how to respond like this?” we asked.

They said they’d been taught in the Stand Together program.

Fear of Criticism

Another 16-year-old guy said it caused him a lot of stress when one person at his school decided to create an anonymous Instagram account and criticize people from behind that anonymity. He and some other students around him agreed that some students only post super-positive photos, “which is really misleading,” one student said.

So the guy made the decision to eliminate all his social media accounts.

“It was a little rough, because everyone around me uses social media,” he said. “But I now have a TON of time more than I had before, when I was wasting time on social.” He spends that time on activities that he says nurture him. And he can still keep in close touch with the friends he cares about through texting.

Deciding to Take Care of Oneself

A 17-year-old girl told the story of how, three years ago, she came down with symptoms of severe depression. One way she took care of herself at this time was to deactivate all her social media accounts. After getting therapy and medical treatment, she’s doing much better, and at the point where she thought she was ready to handle social media again, she bit by bit reactivated her accounts. “It’s just what I needed to do to take care of myself.”

IMG_2192Social Media as a Way to Support New Friends

Finally, another 16-year-old said she’d had positive experiences with social media. She has several friends that she met on one platform or another with whom she has become very good friends—and has even met them in real life a couple of times.

“It’s easier to talk about things when you’re not face-to-face,” she said. “If you love to write, like I do, you can really support someone by writing to them and showing how much you care.”

Nah—Therapy Is Not For Me (But Are You Sure?)

Studies show when people have a bad experience with therapy it can make them have a bad attitude about therapy in general. Sometimes I tell my patients that therapy could help them, and they tell me, “Nah, it’s not for me.” If they had a bad experience before, that response totally makes sense.

What are some reasons you think your child or others you know have had negative experiences with therapy?

Here are a few examples your child may relate to:

The first time they went, it wasn’t their decision.

Going to therapy can help with a lot of different problems your child may have—but if they were made to go or it felt like it was a punishment versus a decision they made to become more healthy, they might have a negative attitude about it. My mom used to make me pick weeds in our driveway, and I kind of have a bad attitude about gardening! Even though a lot of people enjoy it.

The therapist and you did not seem to connect.

We know a big reason therapy works is the therapeutic alliance, which we wrote about in a prior post. If your child felt like they didn’t connect with their first therapist – or especially if they didn’t feel like the therapist cared about them, that might have been a tough experience for them. Telling someone your deepest thoughts makes your child vulnerable and if it didn’t work the first time, maybe they don’t want to take that risk again.

You (the parent) were too involved.

Your child may have felt like they couldn’t be honest if you were always around. Or maybe they felt more nervous and weren’t able to listen because they were worried something they might say would get them into trouble. Parents can still be involved without being overly involved.

Your child felt betrayed.

If your child received therapy when they were younger and the therapist was worried about abuse, that is something that the therapist has to report to the state for their safety. But when you are a kid in the mix of it, sometimes you feel like your trust was betrayed. That can be hard to deal with.

The thing is – one bad experience does not mean the next one will be. And your child’s experience as a young person or child may be different when they are older. There are things you and your child can do to help make sure that their next therapy experience is a good one. We know therapy works and can get your child to better mental health.

If your child had a bad experience before, but wants to try therapy again, here are some things they can try:

  • Make a list of the pros and cons about going to therapy – go over the list with someone they trust like you, another supportive adult or their primary care doctor and together, make a decision if this is a next best step for them
  • At the first session, tell the therapist what their expectations and hopes are from therapy
  • If they feel like they don’t connect with their therapist, ask for a referral to see someone else—therapists are used to this as everyone is different and sometimes certain personalities don’t click
  • If you would like to be involved, talk to the therapist about the best way to communicate with them without making your child feel like they cannot be honest with their therapist. If you feel more work is needed between you and your child, ask your child’s therapist if they recommend family therapy in addition to individual therapy
  • at the first session, your child should talk to their therapist about the limits of confidentiality – what do they always keep private and what if anything, are they not allowed to keep private

Do you have any other examples of negative experiences you or your child have had with therapy? Or tips you have about how to make the next experience positive?

“Stand Together” Celebrates Another Successful Year

Today dozens of middle school students gathered at the Pittsburgh Heinz History Center to share the results of a year’s work on Stand Together, a project to educate other students at their schools about the challenges of mental illness and substance use disorders, and to break the stigma of talking about mental health in ordinary conversation.

“I was in the program last year,” one 14-year-old student said, “and I came back this year because I learned so much that I just wanted to share it with other kids at my school.”

The program is coordinated by Allegheny County’s Office of Behavioral Health and is run by just three staff members. Stand Together has been so successful at breaking down isolation among students with anxiety, depression, ADHD and eating disorders—the four most common mental health problems among students today—that the program now has a waiting list of schools wanting to get in on the action.

Here are some of the ways students have learned to bring awareness and break stigma among their peers:

Continue reading “Stand Together” Celebrates Another Successful Year

Having a Bad Mental Health Day

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.

Living with depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues can sometimes be taxing. I know I have come across this a lot—I feel down, anti-social, or just plain exhausted! While it’s true that we are starting to talk more about mental health conditions, lots of people still find it difficult to talk about what they are experiencing. It’s especially hard when you feel like you were doing so great the past few days and today you just feel like … ugh.

I often don’t know what to say on my ugh days when someone asks me, “How are you doing today?” or, “Do you want to hang out later?” Most of the time I end up just saying something like, “I feel a little tired today—must not have slept well,” or, “I think I’m just staying in tonight, I have a lot of work to do!” Usually, what I really want to say is:

My depression/anxiety symptoms are acting up, and I’m just having a bad mental-health day.

I just feel like people can relate to tiredness and stress a bit more than a real confession of mental-health difficulties. And I don’t want to feel like I’m being a downer or burdening people with my current symptoms.

However, some friends of mine have recently started being completely open about their bad mental health days!

Continue reading Having a Bad Mental Health Day

What Is CBT? A Comic Example

When you feel depressed or anxious, it can feel like you are just lost in your thoughts. A type of therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps to teach you how to change your thoughts. The idea is that by changing your thoughts, you can change your mood and how you deal with day-to-day events. CBT is one of the most effective therapies for depression and anxiety in young people.

  • CBT describes a cycle starting with an Event.
  • A person responds to the Event with a Thought.
  • This Thought leads to an Emotion.
  • Then that Emotion leads to further Action.

Out of all of these responses, the easiest to change in the cycle are the Thoughts, because they can come from an underlying belief system: one example of such an underlying belief system is, “I’m not good at anything.” This belief system is overly negative. CBT helps train you to think more rationally by using evidence, rather than feelings or beliefs.

Like in this comic strip:

Continue reading What Is CBT? A Comic Example

True Friendship

As we go through life, people move in and out of our social interactions. Particularly when we have children with mental illness, it can be difficult to trust others enough to let them know what’s really going on in your life—and in your child’s life. So how can we tell whether someone is a true and genuine friend? While you might hang around with some people, such as people in your neighborhood, your gym, or your faith community, not everyone fulfills the role of a true friend.

Here are five signs that someone is interested in and capable of being your genuine friend.

Continue reading True Friendship

Give Yourself Credit!

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.

Towards the end of the semester, the stress level of every student skyrockets. So many papers, exams, quizzes, and projects are thrown at every student all at once. With only 24 hours in a day, it may seem impossible to students to get everything done.

Students may start the day with a mental list of all the things they have to get done in that day. It may feel frustrating not to be able to achieve everything on their list by the end of the day.

Continue reading Give Yourself Credit!