Caring for the caregivers: 5 strategies to promote parent and teen mental health
Our new report, Caring for the Caregivers: The Critical Link Between Parent and Teen Mental Health, suggests that parents of teens in the U.S. are suffering rates of anxiety and depression similar to teens. Fortunately, much is known about how to mitigate these emotional troubles in parents, how to guide parents in knowing and providing vital emotional support to their teens, how to reduce the harmful impact of parental depression and anxiety on teens, and how to head off damaging parent-teen dynamics.
As part of our report, we developed the following five strategies for promoting parent and teen mental health.
“Forty percent (40%) of teens reported on our survey that they wanted their parents to ‘reach out more to ask how [they’re] really doing and to really listen.’ ”
Listening to teens. Over and over, we’ve heard from teens who simply want their parents to listen. Forty percent (40%) of teens reported on our survey that they wanted their parents to “reach out more to ask how [they’re] really doing and to really listen.” One reason listening is important is because it can motivate more teens to turn to their parents for emotional support. Our data indicate that high percentages of teens are not turning to their parents for this support; the more depressed or anxious teens are, the less likely they are to reach out to their parents. Depressed and anxious teens are much more likely to reach out to their friends (56%) than their parents (32%) for emotional support. We need to provide parents with guidance on specific empathic listening skills that can help them become important sounding boards and advisors to their teens.
Guiding parents in supporting teens’ mental health. Parents need basic facts about what anxiety and depression are, their causes, when worries and bad moods are normal and when they signal significant anxiety and depression, and when a teen needs professional treatment. To provide calming, effective support, parents need guidance in managing their own anxiety when their teens are anxious or depressed. Parents can also be equipped with a range of culturally-informed resources that will help them prevent teens from spiraling into serious depression and anxiety, including brief cognitive-behavioral strategies, stress management strategies such as mindfulness exercises, and brief, engaging activities that build coping skills.
Caring for the caregivers: Promoting parents’ mental health. Community institutions and governments at every level can engage in public education efforts that alert parents and caregivers to signs of depression and anxiety and offer resources for alleviating these challenges. Local professionals and citizens—all of us—also have a key role. For example, primary care physicians and pediatricians can check in with parents about their emotional health and health centers, schools, faith-based organizations, workplaces, public libraries, and many other community institutions can not only provide caregivers with information about anxiety and depression but also help cultivate supportive connections among parents. It’s also vital to expand the growing number of two-generation programs with a strong evidence base that provide support and treatment to parents and teens who are emotionally struggling and that can help undo damaging parent-teen dynamics.
Guiding parents in talking about their own mental health struggles with teens. Depressed parents are more likely to be critical, angry, and withdrawn, and teens with depressed parents are prone to blaming themselves for their parents’ difficult moods. It’s crucial to provide caregivers with culturally attuned strategies for talking appropriately about their own emotional struggles with teens, so that their children don’t interpret these harsh moods as a sign of their failings or as the withdrawal of affirmation or love. It can make a big difference if a parent simply tells a teen, “I’m struggling with some things right now. If I seem shut down or irritable, it’s not your fault.”
Helping teens cultivate meaning, purpose, and hope. Another powerful way that caregivers can help stem teens’ anxiety and depression is by engaging them in activities that focus them on others and/or attach them to principles and goals larger than themselves—both rich sources of meaning and purpose. Thirty-six percent (36%) of our teen survey respondents reported little or no “purpose or meaning in life”—this absence strongly correlated with depression and anxiety. Parents’ efforts to steer their children toward activities that support others will be far more meaningful if parents and other key adults in children’s lives model constructive efforts to take on problems and challenges in their communities. While many adults are taking on these challenges, large numbers of teens view adults as not doing enough. We asked teens in our survey whether “A lot of the adults in my life talk about social problems but do little or nothing about them.” Thirty-seven percent (37%) of respondents reported that this statement was “pretty true” or “very true” and 41% reported that it was a “little true.” Those teens reporting that it was “pretty” or “very” true were far more likely to report anxiety, depression, and lack of purpose.
“Thirty-six percent (36%) of our teen survey respondents reported little or no ‘purpose or meaning in life’—this absence strongly correlated with depression and anxiety.”
Learn more about these strategies and read our new report here.
Posted by Alison Cashin, Director of Communications
