Troubled Teens Resources

Teen crisis intervention is most emphatically indicated when a teen attempts suicide. If there is any time that a family should pursue professional counseling and teen help for themselves and their troubled teenager, it is in the aftermath of a teen’s suicide attempt. Yet, unfortunately, only 30% of affected families do enter therapy.

“…families desperately need support and direction after a child attempts suicide. Depression, which leads to suicidal thinking, affects the entire family unit. To move past the tragedy, families must address the issues that the suicide caused, and continues to cause, in their lives. Chief among the issues is the family’s increased sense of responsibility for the child who attempted suicide. Worried about a repeat suicide attempt, family members, and parents in particular, feel that they have to watch their child constantly—in some cases, sleeping at the foot of the child’s bed every night to make sure he or she won’t attempt suicide.”

Families need help finding balance in their handling of a suicidal teen. There is an balancing act that has to be maintained between intrusive and claustrophobic protection and being vigilant. Complicating matters further is the mental state of the parent or sibling who may have discovered his or her brother after the attempt.

“Often siblings are just as stressed out as the parents because they find the brother after the overdose, or they are the ones in the background while Mom and Dad and the brother are having all of the conflict…
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Working with therapists… patients… learn skills to cope, ways to self-soothe and to seek out sources of support other than their parents.
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Parents, in turn, learn how to listen and not overreact.”

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The link above will provide a list of symptoms to look for.

Teens at risk for teen age drug abuse do not always behaving in a manner that indicates that there is a problem. Studies have identified people known as “high functioning” addicts who, for all intents and purposes, betray no evidence of dysfunctional behavior.

“Lizzie was an A student from first grade on. Everything she touched, she mastered. I really, really thought she was a happy energetic young girl. What i didn’t realize was that she wasn’t performing out of love for what she did, but in fear of disappointing me and her Dad. She masked it so well. I’m still devastated that I didn’t see how much pain she was in.”

This from a mother who has two PHDs married to an aeronautics engineer. The very air they breathe is competition and achievement. They had no idea that their youngest daughter lived in fear of failing. It took a wise therapist for them to recognize that their passion for perfection had made life unbearable. They are a family that literally needed to learn how to play and it took professional counseling to reveal that.

Just as parents monitor physical health, mental and emotional health needs to be observed as well.If you have concerns about your at-risk teen, develop a list of questions and then develop a list of specialists to interview. Interview several therapists before choosing one.

“Consulting your child’s physician or teacher, or your minister, priest, or rabbi may help you identify problems-both in the child and within the family - that could be causing the upset…As a rule, it is the combination of parents’ growing concerns and the observation of outsiders such as teachers, physicians, and family members, that lead parents to consult a clinician for their child.”

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