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May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Are You Ready?

According to US News and World Report, teen suicide is up 4.5-fold (450%) in the last decade, with the bulk of the increase in the last three years.Covid lockdowns and social malfunction have been the new fuel on the depression fire.  National data has given us alarming and awful statistics about how our teens are […]

Global Anxiety and Your Teen

How can an invasion by Russia into Ukraine possibly influence the level of anxiety and depression in your teen? The answer is that we have been bombarded with stress due to Covid, a closed economy, closed schools, masks everywhere, and now a potential war in Europe. As parents, we were more stressed out in the […]

Why do people cut themselves? Understanding teen self-harm

Self-harm can cover a range of things that people do to themselves in a deliberate and harmful way. Although cutting is the most common form of self- harm, other methods include head banging, hair pulling, burning and scalding, biting, scratching, stabbing, breaking bones, swallowing objects, self-poisoning and overdosing. By injuring themselves, children and young people are asserting a form of self- control on their life which they feel is otherwise chaotic and meaningless. Self-harm is a way of coping and of channelling frustration and other strong emotions. In the vast majority of cases, it is not a suicide attempt, but rather a way to let off steam.

Many teens struggle with anxiety and depression.  Some turn to self-harm to deal with their intense feelings. Self-harm and self-injury describe a group of behaviors in which you deliberately hurt yourself — not as a suicide attempt, but as a way to release painful emotions.  Cutting is one of the most common ways that teens […]

Schools and Life are Re-Opening: Talk With Your Teen

blonde teenage boy wearing white shirt sitting on the water looking into distance

I received three phone calls in the last two weeks from parents whose teen recently took their own life… suicide.  As you can imagine, the parents are messes with thousands of unanswered questions and a lifetime of second-guessing.  The most recent suicide was of a local teen football player who was hoping for an Ivy […]