In 2021, 42% of high school students felt so sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row that they stopped doing their usual activities. LGBTQ+ teens were at 69%. (Source: YRBS)

While suicide rates have appeared to level off after sharply rising from 2008-2021, certain teen mental health conditions went up such as eating disorders, self-harm, depression, and anxiety. But enough doomsday stats because this post is about new approaches to teen mental health. And there are some good ones.

We often complain about access to care. But to be honest, we’ll never have enough counselors. We do need more, but what we really need is some changes in how we view mental health care for teens. They are not small adults and their needs are different.

The idea in this article is to prevent kids from getting to crisis. However, if your child has attempted to suicide, there is a new resource on YouTube for that right here, After Your Child’s Suicide Attempt.

Parents are not helpless

It’s archaic to think that the only solution available is to make an appointment with a counselor, drive a child, or have the child drive himself to the therapist. While this might work for some kids, we need to meet them where they are, and, in many cases that’s at school we need to support our schools and our counselors more so they stay.

I encourage parents to work with their school mental health professionals for the best outcomes. In classes I teach, it is always the school counselors and psychologists who know the answers the most challenging questions I ask.

You can learn basic DBT skills and learn how to model and teach those to your kids. (Those links are below.)

I also think we should be adding student wellness centers. However, that isn’t available in most schools today, and this post is about addressing techniques and resources that are available right now and are working.

Where to start

• Your child’s school counselor (not the guidance counselor), school psychologist or if it’s a university student, encourage them to visit College Counseling. We need to invest more in our schools because our counselors are getting burned out.
• Parents and kids can be part of the solution. I teach a class on Raising Mentally Healthy Kids: Parenting Tips for Teaching Kids How to Cope. There is also a presentation on substances and one on suicide prevention.
  • Parents can move from a punitive approach to being more of a wisdom guide
  • Listen more. Lecture less. And Ask questions with curiosity and compassion
  • Allow them to make mistakes. Success is a bunch of lessons learned from failure.
• You can learn DBT skills and model those for your kids. (This is the YouTube Channel) And you can use these. I do. But our kids are not getting as much face-to-face time and fewer opportunities to learn these skills and therefore have a deficit when it comes to resilience. You can change that. So you can learn with your child or you can learn them and then model them. Here are the DBT crisis skills. These can work for you, too. There are also good podcasts. My favorites are opposite action, riding the wave (Mindfulness of Current Emotions).
• Here are some less-than-one-minute emotional regulation videos I have done on YouTube Shorts:
  • Don’t Let Your Brain Bust
  • Managing an Emotional Tsunami
  • Give Your Brain Room to Breathe

Here are some of the programs available so you are aware of new approaches.

PMHCA helps with access to care particularly for those in rural areas

• If you start with your child’s doctor, ask them if they are connected to PMHCA (Pediatric Mental Health Care Access Program). In Virginia, it’s VMAP. But let both the school counselor and the child’s doctor know and close that loop by signing the agreements so the school nurse or school counselor can have conversations with outside resources. The more they communicate with one another and keep you in the loop, the better.
  • Each Pediatric Mental Health Care Access Program recipient supports a phone line for additional information and teleconsultation services. These phone lines are available to practicing providers within many states. This is ideal for rural areas with less access to mental health care.
  • VMAP– The Virginia Mental Health Access Program (VMAP) is a statewide initiative that helps healthcare providers take better care of children and adolescents with mental health conditions through provider education and increasing access to child psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and care navigators.

Family-based therapy or FBT

• Family-based therapy or FBT is emerging as a strategy with good outcomes. This started for treatment of eating disorders in young people and is starting to become more of the preferred treatment option for addiction and mental health issues.
• The primary goal of Family Based Mental Health Services is to help parents and caregivers care for their children who have a behavioral health diagnosis and reduce the need for a higher level of care. Mental Health professionals strengthen and maintain family relationships through therapy, improving the coping skills of all family members, teaching family members to provide the support their child needs, serving as an advocate for their child. They also provide access to mental health services for family members. In short, families are learning to support their loved one at the same time the child is learning it.

SPACE Protocol for managing your child’s anxiety and OCD

• SPACE Protocol for managing your child’s anxiety and OCD– SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions and is a parent-based treatment program for children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and related problems. The goal of SPACE training is to affect change in family behavior by teaching parents how best to respond to their anxious child. Through this kind of treatment, parents can develop the tools to effectively address their child’s anxiety and learn how to reduce some of their own accommodating behaviors.
• The parent works with a trained therapist to learn the strategies with their child. SPACE was developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center and has been tested and found to be efficacious in randomized controlled clinical trials.

NAMI Resources

Finally, if you are a parent at a loss for what to do and have no idea what is available in your area, you can locate and call your state chapter of NAMI, National Alliance of Mental Illness.

Here is the National NAMI helpline and you can start there.

Most state chapters such as NAMI Virginia have a helpline and other resources you can call to find out what is available in your area. I would also encourage you to join a parent support group. It’s not some kumbaya tree-hugging, incense-burning group but one where you find out what has worked and what has not and where the best resources are. Find the NAMI Support Group nearest you on this page.

AnneMoss Rogers

AnneMoss Rogers is a leading wellness and suicide education expert and one of the top mental health speakers and suicide prevention speakers. Known for her powerful, motivational keynotes, AnneMoss combines her personal story of loss with proven strategies to help organizations build a wellness culture that drives results and saves lives.  She speaks at conferences, workplaces, K-12 schools, and universities, delivering impactful presentations that inspire change and promote mental health awareness.
AnneMoss does this work in memory of her son, Charles, who struggled with anxiety, depression, and addiction, and died by suicide at age 20 in 2015.