Substance Abuse Archives | Page 3 of 9

Anxiety & Mood Disorders

Finding the Top Adolescent Residential Treatment Centers

A Checklist for Parents Seeking Residential Treatment for Teens When your child crossed the threshold from pre-teen to full-fledged teenager, you probably braced yourself for the changes you knew were coming. You expected a range of physical, emotional, social, and psychological growth known as differentiation. The experts told you your teen would develop their own personal identity and their own sexual identity. They told you to expect changes in appearance,

February 15, 2022

Anxiety & Mood Disorders

San Diego Teens and Mental Health

Does the San Diego Area Have Enough Mental Health Programs for Teens? Last summer, Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego shared a startling statistic with reporters from local radio station kpbs. At the midpoint of 2021, they’d seen a 25 percent increase in emergency room visits for acute mental health emergencies. As mental health professionals, this caught our attention: we’re both alarmed and concerned. However, if we’re being completely honest,

February 8, 2022

Mindfulness

Complementary Therapies for Dual Diagnosis and Addiction Treatment

Over the past fifty years, treatment for alcohol and substance addiction – now called alcohol use disorder (AUD) or substance use disorder (SUD) – has evolved in several significant ways. The first and most important shift in addiction treatment involved a paradigm shift. Most members of the medical profession and general public now have a new view of the disordered use of substances. The dominant concept of addiction – before

January 24, 2022

Parents

Does Talking About Trauma Trigger Relapse?

Talking about traumatic events is often considered dangerous territory when treating addiction. Some people believe that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) – the gold standard in treating trauma – brings painful memories to the surface. They assert that CBT can be dangerous for people with dual diagnosis – i.e. those both a subtance use disorder (SUD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – might not have the tools to cope with these

January 1, 2022

Anxiety & Mood Disorders

Depression in the U.S. Before and After COVID: Risk of Increased Co-Occurring Disorders

Decades of research and documentation show the relationship between alcohol/substance use disorder (AUD/SUD) and mental health disorders such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder (BPD), and depression. When an individual receives a diagnosis for more than one mental health disorder, clinicians use the terms co-occurring disorders or dual diagnosis. Both these phrases mean exactly what they sound like: co-occurring disorders means that two disorders occur in one individual

December 30, 2021

Family & Home Life

Why Do Teens Get High?

Adolescence: Novelty Seeking, Identity Formation, Social Networks Parents know teens experiment with drinking and drugs during adolescence. The most common drugs teens try during high school are alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco – in that order – although marijuana and tobacco are almost tied, percentage-wise, for the second most commonly used drug among teens during their high school years. Not all teens experiment with intoxicants, of course. But by the end

October 1, 2021

Anxiety & Mood Disorders

Parents – How to Handle Anxiety About Sending Your Teen Out-of-State for Treatment

When you learn your teen has a mental health or alcohol/substance use disorder, it can come as a shock. You feel all kinds of emotions. Sadness, worry, fear, and pain are not unusual things to feel in your situation. It’s not unusual to be all over the place, to be honest. You name it, and you’ll probably feel it. It can be a confusing time. You may even be angry

August 24, 2021

Anxiety & Mood Disorders

Anger Management for Teens

How to Help Teens Handle Powerful Emotions We all get angry sometimes. Some of us get angry often, while some of us have a sunny disposition by default. We don’t angry very often and don’t get bothered by much. Those of us who do get angry a lot learn how to manage that anger. If we don’t, we have family problems, relationship problems, problems at work, and, in some cases,

August 14, 2021

When Should a Parent Consider Adolescent Dual Diagnosis Treatment Centers?

Treatment for Teens With a Substance Use and Mental Health Disorder When a parent finds out their teen has a substance use disorder (SUD) or an alcohol use disorder (AUD), the first thing they want to do is to help their child heal. In most cases, they seek evidence-based treatment for addiction. They ask friends, search online, and take the advice of their teen’s therapist or counselor and find the

August 5, 2021

Anxiety & Mood Disorders

When Does an Adolescent Need a Psychiatric Hospital vs. A Lower Level of Care?

How Can Parents Tell What Level of Care Their Teen Needs? Mental health disorders, like any other type of illness humans experience, come in all types. This is true across the lifespan: children, adolescents, adults, and seniors can all develop mental health disorders. Although the disorders share similar characteristics when they appear in the different phases of life, mental health professionals use slightly different criteria for diagnosing a disorder in

July 30, 2021