Though eating disorders are typically associated with young women, they can affect people of any age and gender, including boys. Currently, at least one-third of eating disorder patients are men, and rates of disordered eating are rising more quickly in young males than females. These trends accelerated during the pandemic, as many children attempted to cope with heightened anxiety, isolation, ...
Depression has become an all-too-common experience for adolescents. Rates of depression are also rising faster among people aged 13-19 than in any other age group: Between 2010-2023, teenage depression increased by 145% in girls and by 161% in boys - nearly 5 times the 33% increase experienced by adults during the same period. As of 2023, nearly 20% of U.S. teens experienced clinical depression, with 18.1% ...
Handling sadness, whether it’s normal situational sadness or chronic depression, is especially challenging for teens. Adolescents are mature enough to experience profound and complex emotions, but they struggle to put their experiences into perspective. The areas of the brain associated with reasoning are still actively developing throughout the teen years, so young adults are prone to handling sadness in ...
Every parent shares the same priority: They just want their child to be happy. They know, of course, that no one can realistically remain happy all of the time, but this doesn’t make them any less protective of their child’s well-being. Naturally, then, few things are as distressing as realizing one’s child is persistently sad. Though worry ...
For parents, even the little white lies that children sometimes tell - e.g., claiming to have completed their homework ...
You may have been approached by your child’s teacher or you may have noticed yourself that your child is ...
Politics has always been a controversial topic, but rarely has our political climate been as divisive as it is right ...
Along with growth spurts, acne, and a strong yearning for independence, adolescence often brings on bouts of depression. For parents, this situation is often doubly worrying: Not only are they concerned about their child’s mental health for what may be the first time, they’re frequently confronted with feelings of helplessness. Their child has, after all, reached the age ...
For many teenagers, the pressure to be “perfect” is an unavoidable reality; whether it's envying those students who appear to ace every subject at school with ease, longing to be one of the popular kids, or wishing to rank among the star athletes, almost all teens have experienced the pain of feeling “less than” at some point. While this is ...
Teen depression is notoriously difficult for parents to understand and manage; not only is telling the difference between normal moodiness and depression sometimes challenging, parents are confronted with the fact that they cannot simply intervene and protect their child as they would have when he or she was younger. While parents are an essential source of support, a teen—like ...
There can be few things more devastating to a family than a suicide of a child. Not just one person is lost but the whole family loses something that it can never get back. Most suicides, however, could have been prevented. This is why it is so vital for families to learn to identify the signals of potential suicide to ...
