One in seven 10-19-year-olds experiences a mental health issue. Yet many young people are unable to access care.
Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation invests in youth-led organizations that address global mental health challenges. These innovative solutions promote help-seeking behavior, spread hope, and foster resilience. They include: Little Lions trains local role models to help children cope with the stress of everyday life; Sister System supports girls as they transition into adulthood.
Depression
Depression is one of the most common mental health problems in adolescents, and can cause serious social, academic and emotional impairment. It’s also the second-to-third leading cause of death among young people worldwide.
Symptoms include feelings of sadness and hopelessness that are persistent and severe. They can also affect eating, sleeping and thinking patterns. Depression is not the same as being unhappy or having a “blue” mood, and it cannot be willed away or “pulled together.” It requires professional treatment to improve.
If you know a youth who has depression, it’s important to listen and offer support. You can ask them to seek help, and encourage them to keep appointments with their healthcare provider. You can also tell them that you care about them and that you want to see them get better. If possible, try to find a solution together—perhaps through talking, taking walks, or listening to music. They may need a combination of treatments, such as psychotherapy and medication.
Anxiety
Anxiety is the most common mental health challenge that kids and teens experience. It can affect their physical health, social skills and their ability to get through daily tasks.
Feeling anxious sometimes is normal, but if it’s happening a lot and interferes with their life, it could be anxiety disorder. It’s important to talk to a trusted adult about it, such as their parents or GP.
Self-report measures are available to screen adolescents for anxiety disorders, including specific phobias and generalized anxiety disorder. The questionnaires use Likert scales to ask about how often the adolescent experiences symptoms. They are easy to administer in the primary care setting and require minimal staff training. Other screening methods include clinical interviews and exposure tasks, which are complex and best conducted in a mental health setting. They involve exposing the adolescent to feared situations and stimuli (eg, public speaking, spiders) in order to reduce avoidance and decrease anxiety symptoms.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
If children and teens have ADHD, they may be at increased risk for accidents. They may have trouble learning in school because of difficulty paying attention or staying focused, and they might make careless mistakes at work or home (deficits in executive function).
People with the hyperactive/impulsive type of ADHD frequently fidget, squirm, leave their seat and have trouble playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly. They act without thinking and often blurt out answers or intrude on other people’s conversations or games. They have trouble following directions and finishing chores or tasks at school or work. They frequently lose things needed for activities, and they tend to forget appointments or deadlines.
Some kids and teens with ADHD take stimulant medications to control their symptoms. These can cause side effects such as an upset stomach, changes in blood pressure and heart rate, and tics (rapid, repetitive movements or sounds, like eye blinking). Talk to your child’s healthcare provider before starting any medication.
Trauma
Trauma can be triggered by many experiences, and people respond differently to trauma. What’s important to know is that it can impact a person for their entire life. It is critical to recognize unhealthy coping mechanisms and to address them in order to promote healing and recovery from trauma.
A traumatic experience is anything that is emotionally or physically harmful or life-threatening to the individual, whether it’s a single event, such as a natural disaster or car accident, or ongoing issues such as violence in the home, abuse and neglect, bullying, and mistreatment in school. These experiences can lead to PTSD and other mental health issues.
The researchers found that students who reported experiencing a traumatic event showed elevated rates of depression and PTSD. They also exhibited a higher value of lifetime suicide risk, but this was not statistically significant.