Quick Adolescent Help

The following are just some events that may trigger mental health issues for teens that may prompt the need for counseling:

When a teen witnesses some stressful event. There are two kinds of stress. Eustress can be beneficial stress such as motivating a teen to study harder for a test. Distress happens when a teen does not manage stress well leading to other complications such as excessive paralyzing worry or anxiety.

If a teen loses an important person in his or her life (e.g., death, moving, breakup), sadness and loneliness is normal and should improve over time. However, sometimes the teen gets locked into long periods of grief and sadness that does not improve. This sadness may become more ingrained and become part of the thought and behavior patterns of the teen that negatively affect his or her relationship with self, friends, parents, siblings, etc.

Some of the key types of therapy for teens are individual, group, and family counseling. Sometimes, it is helpful to do two or three of these therapies to facilitate a faster resolution of the problem. I will describe how each of these can be used with teens in a later post.