Coping with a Teen: A Case Study in Parapsychiatric Instability, Abnormal Behavior, and Psychosis
“Attachment is confusing,” a 14-year-old told me. I began to cry but did not feel anything, which was weird, and I told myself that I would not get attached to anything, that teenager are confused, and it all will change. But then I think of the changes coming and I feel exhausted before really knowing what I want.” She is so articulate about herself, more than I could have been at her age, or even twice her age. She has a capacity for thinking that makes it difficult to see the source of her confusion.
Her identity felt attacked by what felt outside of its scope: What if she was gay? What if she was more like her parents than she thought? Did she feel more like an American or did she feel closer to the country where her parents came from? She seemed to give way to things she didn’t want to do and that made it hard for her to do what she wanted. Through actions, such as sex and drugs, and an attack on her sense of self, the questions were asked.
Freud felt that adolescence was the key point in establishing the differences between generations as each adolescent confronts the realities of adulthood for the first time. The age group is at greatest risk if they get swallowed up by their families or are intimidated by group psychology before they have established a trial identity. Adolescent crisis, he wrote, “may also be looked upon as an attempt at cure” that “ends often enough in a complete devastation.” One is only properly psychiatrically ill on the other side of adolescence, which seems to shuffle us into various forms of neurosis and psychosis. The most common psychotic breaks happen in the years after puberty.
A patient at the emergency room explained to me that he had looked in the mirror and couldn’t identify himself, after going through extreme depersonalization. After her break, she suffered a lot of anxiety and panic attacks, and was diagnosed with an illness called Irritable bowel syndrome. I will call her by her first name, A., just after a couple of years of therapy.
On the other side of the spectrum, you can find stories about the same difficulties swimming around identity, a self that is falling apart, and internal attacks, all of which are cured through imagining an external one. The 15-year-old who is accused of killing four students at his high school in Oxford, Mich., in 2021, wrote in his journal: “the first victim has to be a pretty girl with a future so she can suffer like me.”
I try to allay teenagers’inner voices, Slow down their rush to action, give room to their anxiety, and buy some time to explore what are often complicated feelings about themselves and their world without believing I have any answers. We live in a country full of aggressive, blaming speech, a preference for quick solutions and the reduction of real impasses to superficial actionable items.
Mental Health: What Kinds of Children Are Seeking in Emergency Rooms after a Suicidal Thought? Dr. Nicholas Brewer
Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or visit the hotline’s website.
There has been a steady increase in the number of children who are seen in emergency rooms for suicidal thoughts, according to a new study – and the increase started even before the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought record high demand for psychological services for children.
The study found that a lot of kids with thoughts of suicide aren’t going to the emergency room but Brewer thinks it’s true.
Dr. Nicholas Holmes, senior vice president and chief operating officer at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, said the increase in the number of kids seeking help in his health care system has been “profound.”
In the past nine years, we’d see between one to two patients a day for behavioral health crises, but now we’re seeing 20 to 30 a day.
Other places in the US aren’t so lucky. There is a nationwide shortage of beds for kids who need mental health help, research shows. A 2020 federal survey found that the number of residential treatment facilities for kids had fallen 30% from where it was in 2012.
Poverty, historical trauma and marginalization, trouble at school, online bullies and the pressures of social media, in addition to a lack of access to counseling and therapy, is what children are responding to in their lives.
Adults can help a child when they think about suicide. She says to watch for any problems at school or among the friends, as well as to watch for children who are showing more anxiety or aggression than usual.
“They may act out or have problems sleeping. Irritability and being more withdrawn and isolating ourselves are some things Brewer said they will think about.
“It’s important for parents to feel empowered to really sit back and listen to their kids and talk to them. Really try to relate and understand what is going on with them and help promote positive relationships,” Brewer said.
“We really need to develop more of a strategy to help support all kinds in different ways and really focus on some of those traumas and social influences of health,” Brewer said. “We need to make sure more children will have safe places to grow and thrive.”
CDC’s chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science said the data showed a distressing picture. A growing wave of sadness, violence and trauma has engulfed America’s teen girls.
Responses for the CDC’s bi-annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey were collected in the fall of 2021, offering the first look at trends since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Many measures were moving in the wrong direction. Kathleen Ethier of the CDC’s division of adolescent and school Health said at a media briefing that the data show the mental health crisis among young people continues. She said that the findings are alarming.
But about 57 percent of girls and 69 percent of gay, lesbian or bisexual teenagers reported feeling sadness every day for at least two weeks during the previous year. 20 percent of gay, Lesbian or bisexual adolescents said they’d been forced to have sex at some point, as did 14 percent of girls.
Few measures of adolescent health and well-being showed continued improvement, including declines in risky sexual behavior, substance use and bullying at school. But most other indicators “worsened significantly,” according to the CDC report.
Learning to Survive Illness and Suicides Among Black and Hispanic Students: Evidence from a Pedestrian’s Perspective
Training for staff to recognize and manage mental health challenges is one of the tools that can be used.
King called for action from congress to address youth mental health crises and talked about the importance of regular conversations.
Many of the challenges faced by young people are preventable. I want my young people to be filled with hope, not sadness.
The researchers also analyzed the data by race and ethnicity, finding that Black and Hispanic students were more likely to report skipping school because of concerns about violence. White students, however, were more likely to report experiencing sexual violence.
The last 10 years has seen a rise in sadness and hopelessness among all racial groups. Though Black students were less likely to report these negative feelings than other groups, they were more likely to report suicide attempts than white, Asian or Hispanic adolescents.
Data on risk factors for students with transphobia are not available as the survey didn’t ask about their gender identity.
Social Media Exposure of Child and adolescent Psychopathiatry: From Suicidal Behavior to Depressive Behaviour
Dr. Victor Fornari, the vice chair of child and adolescent psychiatry for Northwell Health, New York’s largest health system, noted that the drop in teen well-being coincided with the rise of smartphones. Although the technology’s full impact on adolescents’ mental health is still unknown, he said, there is “no question” of an association between the use of social media and the dramatic increase in suicidal behavior and depressive mood.
“Kids are now vulnerable to cyberbullying and critical comments, like ‘I hate you’, ‘Nobody likes you,’” he said. It is like harpoons to their heart every time.