How to Come Alongside Your Struggling Teen – A Case Study

In light of the CDC’s recent data showing that three in five teen girls felt persistently sad and hopeless, a CBS News segment questions what parents can do to respond to the crisis. The story of one young woman – and her family’s learning curve – provides a roadmap.

When Ishika Vij was 12 years old, her struggle with anxiety began. In response to mounting academic pressure, she developed an eating disorder. She turned to social media for tips on how to control some aspect of her life. “Just being able to control how I look versus, I thought, you know, I wasn’t worth enough or smart enough. So I was like, maybe I can be pretty enough or I can, you know, like follow these norms that, like, social media has set,” she said.

Her father Sumeet Vij noted that kids his daughter’s age “ are just exposed to a lot more things much earlier than we ever thought.”

So what can parents do to address the teen mental health crisis?

Limit social media access

Some clinical psychologists like Lisa Damour recommend parents fight back by delaying and limiting their children’s access to social media. Girls are particularly prone to social media harm. “When girls are in distress they tend to collapse in on themselves, whereas when boys are in distress they tend to act out,” Damour explained.

Help teens regulate their emotions

Recognize that as parents, you cannot prevent your teen from experiencing difficult feelings, but you can listen and help teens make sense of their strong feelings. When teens are in crisis, Damour suggests parents should “approach it from the side of what we call emotion regulation.”

“You can’t get rid of the distress. You can’t keep it from arriving. But you can regulate it,” she explained. “Getting feelings out, as teenagers say, is part of how they get relief.”

In Ishika’s case, expressing her emotions to her parents was not productive and did not lead to help. It was only when her distress increased to such a level that she experienced suicidal thoughts – and a therapist told her family she would die if she did not get treatment – that they understood the severity of the problem.

Do not fall into the “not-my-kid” trap

“A lot of parents have the not-my-kid attitude,” Ishika noted. They cannot envision their child having the kind of problems they may hear about in the news, which only happen to other people’s children. It’s important to recognize that mental health struggles are incredibly common – and thankfully, treatable.

Recognize the signs that something is wrong

Sumeet Vij said that he, like many parents, did not recognize the signs his daughter was struggling with her body image and mental health. “You don’t see it even when it’s hiding in plain sight,” he said. Only in retrospect, “when you look back, you see the symptoms and you could say, ‘Hey, these are all there.’ But while we are going through this, we just didn’t realize it.”

Keep a close eye on your teen. Watch out for warning signs like a sudden drop in grades, self-isolation, a shorter temper, and behavioral changes in eating and sleeping.

Offer teens what they need most

Damour stresses that teens need two big things for healthy development: warmth and structure. It can be difficult to provide them, because teens must necessarily push away from their parents in order to develop healthy independence and become an adult. They may not seem to welcome or receive that structure and affection, but they need it all the same.

“It’s harder sometimes with teenagers. But I think the key with teenagers is to remember that’s their job and it’s not personal,” Damour added.

Seek professional help and reject stigma

If your teen is struggling, seek out professional help. Thanks to clinical interventions – half a year in a partial hospitalization program including therapy and food monitoring – Ishika is now in recovery. Her family, once reticent to take her pleas for help seriously, now openly discuss mental health. And Ishika is using her voice to advocate for mental health for other teens.

Watch the clip or read the full story here.

Or read more on what teens need from their parents here.

 

O’Donnell, Norah and Hastey, Alicia. “How parents can combat the ongoing teen mental health crisis.” CBS News, 18 Apr 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mental-health-crisis-teens-how-parents-can-help/.

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash