With the increasing awareness regarding mental health, around the world. It’s time for you to look around yourself and help people in need of your support. If you are a parent then your children are the first ones that deserve your support and attention. Keeping your teen’s mental health in check should be of utmost importance to you.
It is highly probable that during your teen years you were in dire need of help. But you and your mental health were ignored by your parents. Now as your role has reversed you need to take the reigns. Protect your child from all the calamities you have been through. Set an example for not only your children but other parents around you, too.
Teen mental health is of paramount concern. Mental disorders are debilitating and often emerge in adolescence. Parents tend to keep an eye on their teen’s activity but not on the teen’s mental health. This is the age that your child goes through all sorts of hormonal, behavioural, social, and mental changes. The changes need to be smooth and should be monitored by a concerning adult. This close monitoring will let you identify a potential problem and devise a solution to it.
Ways To Improve Your Teen’s Mental Health
A few tips, if effectively applied can help you maintain or improve your child’s’ mental health.
1. Look For The Signs
According to Who, an estimated 10-20% of adolescents globally experience mental health conditions, yet these remain undiagnosed and untreated. Your child can be one of them, but you can help them. First, you need to look for the signs of any mental illness they might be showing. If your teen likes staying alone or cries a lot or avoids conversations, you need to look into it seriously.
You also need to understand that children divert from their previously normal behaviour when they hit adolescence. So a normal change in behaviour is nothing to worry about. Also if you do notice something odd, avoid pestering your child and try to look into matters in a more subtle way.
2. Make Them Feel Comfortable
Living in Pakistan, where the norm is to make your children obey you by being strict and hard to reach. You need to go against the odds to be your child’s go-to person. Make them feel comfortable around you. They no longer have to sit straight and lower their head to talk to you. All these might be signs of respect but can create vast differences between you and your child. If your children are not comfortable around you they are less likely to involve you in the conflicts they go through on a daily basis.
3. Promote Communication
Open communication between parents and their children is a sight rarely seen in Pakistan. Stand out! make open communication with your teenagers. Talk to them, understand them, be available for them and lastly be friends with them. Being friends does not mean that they no longer have to respect and obey you. Teach them to respect you but not to fear you. Having a friendly talk with your teen kid after they come back from school will put their mind off of the tensions they carried home. You might get lucky, and something that has been bothering them might slip of their tongue. Eventually, they will start trusting you with their problems
Check-in with your teen. Ask them how their day went? what did they study? what art their friends up to?. it would invite them to join in the conversation and they will eventually tell you all.
4. Support Them
If you have succeeded in making your teen comfortable enough and reached a point of open communication. It’s time for you to support them. If your child is seeking your help in any matter, go help them in the blink of an eye. You need to realize that if your child has openly asked for help he/she must be in dire need of it. As children in their teens tend to keep all the issues to themselves.
Work with them in setting up new routines, works and goals. This way their routines will entertain them and will keep you in the circle too.
5. Maintain Your Own Self
Whether you believe it or not children look up to their parents the most. Keeping a healthy and stable relationship between you and your partner will affect your child’s’ brain positively. Couples who fight or are not on good terms tend to scar their children for life. The parental conflict has been linked to aggression, depression, eating disorders, and anxiety in the children
Even if you are a single parent, your positive outlook towards life will make your children do the same. Your negative tendencies are likely to be translated into your teen’s behaviour, so try and do the contrary. Looking up to a strong figure throughout their life will make them strong too. Your negative tendencies are likely to be translated into your teen’s behaviour.
6. Don’t Hesitate To Seek Professional Help
Mental health has remained a taboo since the advent of the human population. Until recently people didn’t even recognize it as a mental condition. Today people are more aware of mental health and it’s a lot easier to seek professional help than ever before. If you think that your teen has serious issues with depression, anxiety, or any other medical condition, you should consult a psychologist. Proper therapy coupled with your efforts will make your child blossom.
Book an appointment now, to seek professional help. You can book an appointment with top psychologists in Pakistan through Marham by calling at Marham helpline: 0311-1222398 or by online booking facility through the website or Marham mobile app.
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Hiba Batool
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