Troubled Teens Resources

Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder is often associated with other disorders. Teens diagnosed with ADHD are also often experiencing depression or extreme anxiety. That is one reason why early diagnosis is important. Teen age drug abuse is often a concern for the parent who doesn’t wish to medicate their teen. But, by the same token, an undiagnosed ADHD teen, in attempting to diminish their anxiety or blow off their depression, often starts to self-medicate on their own.

The newest reports suggest that along with anxiety and depression may come a more increased risk for bulimia and anorexia.

“Results showed that girls with ADHD were 3.6 times more likely than girls without ADHD to develop eating disorders. Also, girls with both ADHD and an eating disorder were more likely than girls who only had ADHD to experience depression, anxiety, and disruptive behavior disorder.

They concluded that ADHD increases the risk of developing an eating disorder significantly.

This research could have an influence on the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in young girls. Because these girls are so much more likely to develop an eating disorder, it may be essential that girls with ADHD be screened regularly for eating disorders or unhealthy eating attitudes.

With eating disorders, prevention is often much more effective than treatment after the fact. If ADHD is a risk factor for an eating disorder, doctors have one more tool for detecting and preventing eating disorders early, making recovery much more likely.”

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One of the first concerns that parents of ADHD teens express is that medicating their teen will set them up for full blown teen age drug abuse.If nothing else, some parents feel that it will introduce them into a life long habit of seeking answers from a pill bottle. Though such concerns are understandable, there is no definitive research to support those fears.

What research has shown is that animals used in testing did later demonstrate drug seeking behavior, but the doses that they were administered were 50-200 times higher than any human would ingest.

“What is relevant is what we know about adults and teens who were give medications as children. Ten studies that have addressed this important issue.

• Six of the studies demonstrate clearly that earlier treatment results in reduced substance abuse.
• Three studies show no difference.
• One study shows higher risk for substance abuse connected to earlier treatment.
• No study shows any increased risk of substance abuse when the severity of ADHD is factored in.

Treatment isn’t all that matters. So does treatment response. Studies show that adolescents with ADHD who respond well to their medications are at lower risk for substance abuse compared than those who respond poorly to their medication.

In summary:

• Stimulant treatment of ADHD appears to result in reduced alcohol and drug problems, not increased substance abuse.
• Some ADHD youth and adults self medicate with substances to treat their ADHD and self esteem problems. Treating ADHD with medication may reduce this phenomenon.”

(source)

Teens at risk quite often experience depression and just as often parents throw their hands up in the air and exclaim, “What in the world do you have to be depressed about?”

Bad idea. First you discount their pain and if you do that often enough, troubled teenagers will start to hide that hurt or sorrow and then it will really start doing some damage hidden when away from the light of day. True enough, next to a mortgage and bills and a job that grinds your very life away, a teen’s problems can certainly appear insignificant to a parent.

That is when parents have to employ some empathy and remember that in the scale of a teen’s world, a rejection from a friend or a sneer from the popular kids is tantamount to the mortgage getting behind. Teens usually really do not “get” that they have much to be grateful for because a good percentage of suburban teens have had little understanding of poverty or disease or those experiences that makes one grateful to have just survived to live another day.

Even if the depressed teen has blown a mole hole of a problem into a mountain of drama, the resulting depression, untreated, can lead a teen to self medicate, and therein lies the path to teen age drug abuse. If your teen has expressed sorrow or even jokingly proclaimed that life is to hard and not worth it, take care to make sure that there isn’t a deeper root to explore.