Troubled Teens Resources

Teen crisis intervention that directs attention to the increasing menace of teenage suicide and depression has been the mission of many in the field of mental health for years. Unfortunately, many parents fail to recognize the basic signs that can manifest during a teen’s bout with depression, thinking it is just moodiness or typical teen angst.

Some troubled teens are able to mask their depression and will do so if they have anxiety over causing stress for their parents or family. Some teens will become obsessed with sports or video games, trying to exorcise their demons by becoming so busy that they can ignore their sadness and fears. Unfortunately, some teens are swept away with the powerful emotions that accompany depression, unable to recognize that their view of the world is being greatly distorted.

Yet, even with all of the ways teens disguise depression, the following symptoms will inevitably become apparent.

• Sad or irritable mood
• Loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyable
• Large changes in appetite or weight
• Difficulty sleeping, or oversleeping
• Slow or agitated movement
• Loss of energy
• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt
• Difficulty concentrating
• Frequent thoughts of death or suicide3
• Frequent headaches, muscle aches, stomach aches or tiredness, without a medical cause
• Frequent absences from school or poor performance in school
• Talk of or efforts to run away from home
• Boredom, sulking
• Lack of interest in spending time with friends or family
• Alcohol or substance abuse
• Social isolation, poor communication
• Fear of death
• Extreme sensitivity to rejection or failure
• Increased irritability, anger, hostility, or crying
• Reckless behavior
• Neglect of clothing and appearance
• Difficulty with relationships
• Changes in mood

(Source)

Is your teen on the verge of out-of-control? What is that looking like in your house? Is your teen invisible, lurking in the shadows, snarling like a late night cat as they pass you in the halls? Is it belligerence, in-your-face defiance or is it a chain of little lies, slowly strangling the respect and love, shackling the family to the out of control teen just like a ball and chain.

When is enough, enough? When do you sit down and start researching the appropriate boarding school and treatment program for your struggling teen? Just exactly what are you waiting for? After the tattoo, did you say you’d draw the line at a piercing? How many piercings does your teenager have now? Have you listened to the lyrics of their music, the dialog in their movies, the words in their blogs? Across all genres there is a continuous chord of death and brutality and a scathing, unnerving contempt for life.
Do I exaggerate? Hope so - don’t think so. Listen in to some of this:

Listen To The Conversation

“The music industry is cashing on the surging popularity of teen angst, manufacturing it so that if you’re not miserable, you’re obviously, “suppressing the darker side” to be “the happy bunny” this so-called “everyone” wants you to be. Horizontal arm scars are a fashion trend much like skinny jeans, (and just as ugly) and your most recent suicide attempt is a lunchroom buzzword.

This culture of teenage suicide encourages self-mutiliation by making it acceptable to give into pain, because apparently, some white-haired douchenozzle in LA gives a crap about your self-inflicted sense of alienation. Instead of telling you to grow the hell up and stop being such a whiney little wank-job, the Hot Topic/My Chem culture encourages surrendering to your idiotic tendencies because it’s the hip new thing to do. By putting so much emphasis on self-destruction and thus bringing it to light gives it the power to become a heroic trend, much like eating disorders and school shootings.
[..]
I can’t imagine a more pathetic scene than a bunch of pre-teens with eyeliner running down their faces, (especially the boys, yuck) sobbing over tepid lyrics like those found in “Drowning Lessons:” “From the times that I’ve killed you and then/We can wash down this engagement ring/With poison and kerosene/We’ll laugh as we die/And we’ll celebrate the end of things/With cheap champagne.”
(source)
(warning:language that could be deemed offensive)

Parents Don’t Have To Fight for Their Troubled Teen Alone

The writer ends with this:

I say, do it. Up the street, kid, not across the highway. The only thing stopping you is that you know if you’re dead, you can’t soak up any more attention from your short-bus internet friends…”

What ensues in the comments is point and counterpoint of argument and diatribe and anger, much of it is harsh and the link to this piece is off limits if you are under 18. But the point is, this is the conversation parents need to be aware of.

And if it is a conversation that your troubled teens are participating in, then it is time to seek out a therapist, work out a plan, check with your health insurance, see what programs are available if no insurance is available, and then start exploring brat camps, wilderness therapies, and boot camps.

Every generation of teenagers flirt with the idea of dying and teen angst is not new. What is new is the constellation of music, media, and culture, all amplified exponentially over a spectrum of electronics from Internet,  Ipod to PlayStation.

Is that what you want to take on alone?

That troubled teens are emotionally immature is a given. The teenage years were once, ideally, a period of time when a teen had safe passage - to explore life and to grow in emotional depth. That ideal is tough to shoot for in a culture that assaults a teen’s sensibilities on all levels, 24/7.

Ipod, video games, Internet, TV; all seem to conspire to turn a 10 year old into a 14 year old. Rap music idealizes killing, a young girl is called a “hoe” and a heroin addicted model is conferred the title, heroin sheik. There is no safe passage for today’s troubled teen if they are not given the tools and skills to navigate through emotional chaos.

Time eventually teaches us all that any one incident that breaks your heart, will pass. Teenagers need time to learn how to walk through pain to peace. They need time to learn to wrestle deep sadness and walk away stronger. If they never learn the natural seasons of the human heart, the ebb and flow of good and bad, they most often will founder, and sometimes, before they ever discover that “this too will pass“, they take their lives.

Teenage suicide is a fact of contemporary life. Yes, it is one more item for the aware parent to be vigilant for. The Jason Foundation was founded by the father of a 16 year old young man who, without any warning, took his life. The Jason Foundation serves as another powerful tool for education and intervention in the life of an at-risk teen.

Some information from their website:

On July16, 1997, Jason Flatt became a statistic and part of an alarming increase in the nation’s youth suicide rate. The facts reveal that a silent epidemic of youth suicide is ravaging our nation and stealing the futures of our young people.
• Suicide ranks as the THIRD leading cause of death for ages 15-24 and FOURTH for ages 10-14.
• Suicide is the SECOND leading cause of death for our college age youth, as well as for ages 15 to 19 in many states.
• NHSDA Report / SAMHSA (US Dept. of Health) – In 2000, over ONE Million youth attempted suicide in the U.S. That equates to over 2700 attempts each day in our nation by youth ages 12 to 17.
• Each week in our nation, we lose approximately 100+ young people to suicide.
• Even though white males make up the majority of completed suicides, from 1980-1995, suicide among black youth ages 10-14 increased 233% and in black youth ages 15-19 suicide rates increased 126%. For black youth in the South region of the nation, there was an increase of 214%.
• In the past forty years, youth suicide rates have almost tripled. Between 1980 and 1996, suicide rates for ages 10 to 14 increased by over 100%.
• More teenagers and young adults have died of suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia and influenza, and chronic lung disease COMBINED.
• According to the APA, four out of five people who attempt suicide have given clear warnings.