teen depression tagged posts

How Can Parents Help in Shared Decision Making?

Mother and daughter with doctor

Families for Depression Awareness for Care for Your Mind

Your teenager has
been diagnosed with a mood disorder and the clinician is talking with
her or him about treatment. What is your role as a parent in the
shared decision making model? How can you participate?


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The Why, Where, When, Who, and How of Mental Health Screening

Susan Weinstein
Editor-in-Chief, Care for Your Mind

October 11, 2018 marks National Depression Screening Day, a
prompt for people with concerns about their mental wellbeing to take advantage
of nearby in-person screening opportunities and get connected to local
resources. Participating in a screening day made all the difference for 25-year-old
Monica, whose mother told her to go take a screening or she’d take her there
herself.


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The Sleep Oasis

Maribel C. Ibrahim, Co-Founder and Operations Director
Start School Later, Inc.

If you are a California resident or a consumer of national news, you may have heard about a bill awaiting Governor Jerry Brown’s signature. The bill doesn’t deal with class sizes, instructional curricula, or testing standards, but it may provide an unprecedented way to deal with a longstanding and national-recognized health issue among students. It has to do with sleep.

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Preventing Depression in Vulnerable Youth: To Prevent Suicides, We Need to Do More

In order to reverse the trend in youth and adolescent suicide rates, we need to implement effective interventions to prevent depression. Though that remains a challenge for the population as a whole, there are vulnerable subgroups – including socioeconomically disadvantaged, sexual minority, and racial and ethnic minority youth – for whom it is not clear that common preventive interventions are effective. There is a reason we don’t know this: we’re not doing enough to find out.

Last week, Dr. Donna Holland Barnes discussed the horrific upward trend of suicide rates among very young Black males, ages 5-11. We know that one of the key strategies in preventing youth depression and depression symptoms–often precursors to suicidal ideation–is to use early interventions that help to develop resilience, coping and communication skills, and capacity for emotional expression. Dr. Barnes notes that there are some excellent programs for introducing coping mechanisms but, unfortunately, funding and access limit their implementation in schools.

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