How Parents Can Prepare College-Bound Teens for Mental Wellness
Transitioning from high school to college can be an exciting yet overwhelming time for many students and their parents. At this stage of life, college-bound teens may face new – or recurrent – mental health challenges. Parents can take proactive steps to promote mental wellness that help college-bound teens prepare for these challenges.
Setting Boundaries for Healthy Relationships and Caregiver Self-Care
Healthy boundaries are essential for any caregiver supporting a loved one living with depression. Boundaries provide structure in relationships and ensure that everyone involved is respected and gets their needs met. By setting clear limits, you can prioritize your wellness while continuing to be a support for your loved one.
Helping Teens Heal From Trauma
Trauma among teens is more common than you might believe. By the age of sixteen, approximately one-quarter (25%) of children and adolescents have experienced at least one traumatic event. As a caring adult, you have an important role to play in aiding them as they heal.
Part 2: Creating a Circle of Support with Your Loved One
In part 2 of this series, we highlight the importance of the support network for both you as a caregiver and your loved one living with depression. Unlike a treatment team, this network consists of people within a community who provide support with emotional, spiritual, and/or practical challenges.
Part 1: Building a Treatment Team with Your Loved One
Part 1 of this series focuses on the treatment team, the network of providers and other professionals who support your loved one’s care. Hear from mental health providers about how they’re involved in your loved one’s care, what you can do to help your loved one connect with them, and what you can expect your role to be.
Avoiding Depression Treatment Pitfalls
Helping your loved one get treatment for their mental health condition can be time-consuming, confusing, and frustrating. There are steps you can take as a caregiver to make the process of getting treatment easier.
What’s My Role? Helping Your Loved One Manage Depression Treatment
It’s a frustrating fact: there is no one-size-fits-all treatment for depression. As a caregiver, you want to confidently point your loved ones toward treatment options you know will help them get well. Unfortunately, finding the right treatment takes time and is almost always a trial and error process.
From My Experience: Youth Discuss Living Through a Mental Health Crisis
The teen years can be challenging. When pressures from school, peers, work, family, and society build, it can be hard to know how to let off steam. Bingeing Netflix and sleeping through tough days might feel helpful at the moment, but that doesn’t address the underlying stressors. Too often, teens feel alone, overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, and without hope. Sometimes this can lead to a mental health crisis situation. What happens then?
Preventing Suicides: Supporting the Teens in Your Life
With suicide as the third-leading cause of death among youth age 15 to 24, suicide prevention is a topic that parents and guardians of teens can’t ignore. Although it may feel overwhelming, when you have knowledge and resources, you can play an essential role in preventing teen suicides.
Providing Support When You Need Support: Caregiving While Depressed
One thing about depression and families: we don’t always have depressive episodes one person at a time. For caregivers, this means that we need to be able to take care of others even as we deal with our own depression. It can be done – and Families for Depression Awareness has strategies and examples to share!
Postpartum Depression and Maternal Mental Health: How Caregivers Can Help
Maternal mental health conditions affect 1 in 5 women. With added stress in the home, caregivers — including fathers, spouses and partners, parents and guardians, and adoptive parents — are vulnerable to burnout and depression. With the right education, caregivers can recognize when help is needed and how to access it.
Creating Healthy Tech and Media Habits with Your Teen
For Family Caregivers, Family Members, Friends, and Caring Adults interested in learning about the effect of technology and media on teen mental health and how to support teens’ wellness.