How Parents Should Cope with Troubled Teenagers

It's something every adult has experience with - being a teenager. The teenage years can be filled with angst, turmoil and change. Subsequently, your teenager may display erratic behavior and mood changes. Your teenager may experiment with alcohol, cigarettes, other tobacco or drugs. Such experimentation may add to your teenagers' woes, often making it difficult to cope with the young people developing from children into adults. While there are many coping mechanisms - including communication and letting time work its' course - please don't jump to any conclusions, when determining how to cope with a troubled teenager.

According to the article "The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise" in the February, 2008 issue of Scientific American Mind, "A study of antidepressant use in private health insurance plans by the New England Research Institute found that 43 percent of those who had been prescribed antidepressants had no psychiatric diagnosis or any mental health care beyond the prescription of the drug." Similarly, parents should not jump on the medication bandwagon when turmoil and hardship strikes their family or the increasing number of Americans taking anti-depressants and other prescription drugs will continue to rise, as it has been doing. According to the same Scientific American Mind article, eleven percent of women were taking anti-depressants as of 2007.

While prescription medications have their place, there are many steps that should be taken by parents for teenagers before resorting to prescription medications. There is no real negative consequence to trying to cope without utilizing prescription drugs. However, using medications prematurely can have a variety of negative side effects. According to the aforementioned article, "A 2004 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that 'the risk of suicidal behavior is increased in the first month after starting antidepressants, especially during the first one to nine days.'"

Although many drugs are now readily available over the counter or even online, alternatives to medication should be pondered. In addition to medical side effects created by the use of a drug, such use can have other lasting consequences. A history of being medicated will forever follow a child around, even if said child was merely medicated due to the actions of an overzealous parent who was trying to look out for the child, but, perhaps, did not have all the facts. The fact of the matter is that parents often do not have all the facts when it comes to the lives of their children.

According the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Office of Applied Studies "2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings" figure 5.3, the mean age of first marijuana use was 17.4 years old among past year initiates aged 12 to 49 - smack dab in the middle of those teenage years. Many of those first time users are probably reluctant to tell their parents about their experimentation, to say the least. Therefore, it would be remiss for a parent to act rashly without all the facts. Putting such a teenager on prescription or non-prescription medication would be remiss. Yet, in this day and age, advertising bombards family households with quick medical fixes for all our woes. It is hard to ignore the onslaught of information claiming this or that pill can cure what worries you. However, often, it must be done.

Putting a young person on medication can send a message that there is something wrong with them and they cannot fix it without quick fixes provided by medication when, in reality, many ills can be circumvented with a little hard work and good will. Forcing medications upon a child can close them off from the World, make them feel isolated and hamper their relationship with you. In the future, rather than learning to cope with their troubles, medicated youngsters may turn to similar quick-acting answers, which can come in the form of alcohol, tobacco and drugs, further impairing their ability to evolve as developed human beings.

Furthermore, once you write a mental history into the file of a child, it will follow them throughout life. A parents actions, intended to help a child, can hurt the child later on in life. Such histories can hamper them in the pursuit of jobs, rental spaces or the purchase of apartments or houses. Applications for loans could become more troublesome with such a checkered history, even if their history is mostly irrelevant. Undoubtedly, health insurance costs will rise, as will life insurance costs.

Such a history can also act as a strike, of sorts, in the three strike judicial system. While it will not constitute one of the three strikes allowed, it serves the same purpose as a strike, in a distinct way. It alerts others to the possibility that this could be a troublesome person, as a strike would. As such, someone with a past involving medication is more likely to undergo extra examinations and punishments, which will cost extra time and money. In some instances, it will cost more than time and money and have almost irreparable emotional consequences.

Although not a doctor or employed in fields of sociology or psychology, a good recommendation is not to jump to on the medication bandwagon too soon, in spite of the constant bombardment of the advertising media, especially with a child. It is one thing for an adult to decide to medicate themselves, but it is a whole other world of responsibility to medicate children. So, please, proceed with caution.

For more on parenting, also check out Scientific American Mind's "The Secret to Raising Smart Kids" and "Should Parents Tell Their Children About Past Drug Use?"