What Causes Borderline Personality Disorder in Teens?
Borderline personality disorder in teens is marked by high levels of impulsivity, repeated self-harming and suicidal attempts, conflicted relationships with others, and high emotional sensitivity and reactivity. But what causes this disorder? Experts can’t point to one single cause of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in adolescents. Mental health professionals believe it is caused by several […]
How Horses Can Help Teens Overcome Mental Health Issues
Equine-assisted therapy, which involves interacting with horses, is a widely used therapeutic tool, especially with adolescents. The unique sensitivity of horses, and their oft-cited characteristic of being “nonjudgmental”, helps teens develop the same characteristics towards themselves. In equine-assisted therapy (EAT), teens are required to be fully present. They need to watch for and respond to […]
How Art Therapy Will Help With Trauma
What does painting have to do with mental health? Lots, actually. Art therapy is a popular intervention for those with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, low self-esteem, trauma, and more. PTSD and other childhood attachment issues like neglect are particularly amenable to art therapy. Many studies analyzing children with PTSD find that the participants in the treatment […]
My Teen Experienced an Extreme Trauma: What Can I Do?
We recently posed a question on social media: “Hey Parents of Teens! What Do You Want to Know? What topic would be the most helpful for you? If you’ve ever thought, ‘I wish I had a guide to deal with this problem!’ Now is your chance to ask for that guide.” Members of our community […]
The Consequences of Sexual Assault
This month – April – is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. We’ve already posted one article about sexual assault: Sexual Assault Awareness Month: History, Facts, and Figures During February of this year, we posted several articles about teen dating violence. We discussed the warning signs and gave tips and advice about what to do if you […]
Sexual Assault Awareness Month: History, Facts, and Figures
What is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM)? The first official SAAM occurred in April 2001, organized by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC). The roots of the movement that led to the first SAAM can be traced back generally to the social activism of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and specifically to […]
What To Do If You’re A Victim of Teen Dating Violence
The first thing to do if you’re the victim of teen dating violence – or any intimate partner violence, no matter how old you are – is this: know that violence, anger, or controlling behavior is not a sign of how much someone loves you. Rather, it’s a sign something inside the angry, violent, or […]
If a Parent Thinks Their Teenager is Being Sexually Abused, How Can They Be Sure?
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: their child being abused. Sexually, emotionally, or physically, it doesn’t matter which – they’re all virtually unbearable to conceive. And that’s for us, the adults, thinking about it from the outside. We have life experience, we have perspective, and we have a fully developed prefrontal cortex that enables us to […]
The Children of 9/11: How Are They Now?
The Children of 9/11 The attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. were the largest attacks on the U.S. soil by a foreign entity since Pearl Harbor. Historians, war buffs, and armchair foreign policy experts can quibble about the details of this claim, but one thing […]
Trends in Teen Violence: 1991-2015
Anyone who pays close attention to the news media would think the world is getting more dangerous by the minute. Local news seems to lead every broadcast with crime. A robbery here. A murder there. A kidnapping nearby. National news highlights tragically violent stories over positive stories every day. We know about the college student […]