4 Troubled Teens Blog

Speech Debelle has experienced a lot in a short amount of time. She left home when she was a teenager, and was forced to sleep on the streets and in hostels.

According to a Sept. 9 article by Louise Jury of the London Daily Standard, these early setbacks didn't stop Debelle from achieving success in the music world:

A south London rapper who once lived rough was surrounded by the family she left as a teenager as she won the 20,000 Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize.

Speech Debelle, 26, trounced critics' favourites Florence And The Machine and Bat For Lashes as well as big sellers Kasabian to pick up the award established as an alternative to the commercial Brits.

Despite taking her inspiration from her troubled and lonely past when she slept on the streets and in hostels, Debelle celebrated [her victory] with her mother, Marilyn Dennis, with whom she lives again in Mitcham, and grandmother, Madame De Belle, from Streatham.

The rise in childhood obesity has lead to countless studies, books and articles about proper nutrition. But as Julius Pokomandy reported in a Sept. 9 North Shore News article, childhood eating habits can also affect whether or not young people will engage in adolescent substance abuse:

Studies from the National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University have been looking at the tremendous impact that family meals have on children. Their research repeatedly shows how children suffer when they don't spend regular, casual time with their families gathered around the dinner table.

Here is a quote from their summary:

"Compared with teens who frequently had dinner with their families (five nights or more per week) those who had dinner with their families only two nights per week or less, were twice as likely to be involved in substance abuse. They were 2.5 times as likely to drink alcohol, and nearly three times as likely to try marijuana."

Family members who eat together also have healthier relationships with each other, Pokomandy wrote, and children in these families report less tension at home.

Politicians and civic leaders are among those praising the Ballyclare planning board's decision to approve the establishment of Northern Ireland's first specialist psychiatric hospital for children and young people about 20 miles northwest of Dublin

A Sept. 16 Newtownabbey Times article reported the following:

The new 30-bed Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) unit, due to be built with-in a 14-acre site off Templepatrick Road, will employ psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, social workers and other healthcare professionals offering round-the-clock care to children and young people with mental health issues, severe eating disorders and acquired brain injuries.

The Affinity Health Care project is expected to create 120 new jobs initially, but could support up to 170 posts when it's fully operational.

"It's a facility we need and I would hope that young people are provided with extra mental health services that are tailored to their needs as soon as possible. Northern Ireland is crying out for a dedicated service for young people and this is a very positive announcement," said Alliance MLA David Ford.

Communities That Care, a program designed to reduce the rate of substance abuse among U.S. eighth-graders, has reported significant progress.

Among adolescents who participated in the program, alcohol use has been reduced by 25 percent, binge drinking has declined by 37 percent, and use of smokeless tobacco has decreased by 50 percent.

• The university-designed program is in place in12 small and medium-sized towns in seven different states.
  
• Each city was matched with a town of similar size, which did not employ the program, as a way to test the impact of the program.
  
• Communities That Care started in 2004 and now involves more than 4,400 teens.

A study of the program appeared in the journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Sometimes a troubled teen whos struggling to overcome problems with drugs, an eating disorder or anger issues just needs to get away from ordinary life. Thats the idea behind wilderness therapy programs  they give kids time away from their normal environment so they can focus on their immediate problems.

In a Sept. 11 article on the website of Colorado's Channel 9 News, writer Randy Barber praised the ability of wilderness therapy programs to help troubled teens:

[Wilderness therapy programs] assist struggling adolescents and young adults who are dealing with a variety of issues from self-esteem problems to depression, to promiscuity to addiction. The program separates the youth from their ordinary life, bringing them into the wilderness far from the influence of the friends, family and situations that may have created or contributed to the problem.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force issued a recommendation that pediatricians begin regularly screening their patients for depression. A questionnaire was made available that asks how often patients have felt sad, had a hard time sleeping or thought of hurting themselves.

According to a Sept. 13 Patriot-News article by Carolyn Kimmel, the effort has resulted in improved efforts to identify potential problems -- but the increased screenings haven't been accompanied by more efficient access to treatment:

Left untreated, mental health disorders in children and adolescents lead to higher rates of suicide, violence, school dropouts, family dysfunction, juvenile incarcerations, alcohol and other drug use, and unintentional injuries, the CDC reports. ...

Nationwide and locally, there is a shortage of child psychiatrists, which makes getting an immediate appointment a challenge. ...

The severity of symptoms dictates how fast the process moves, said Launa Snyder, outpatient coordinator for Behavioral Health Services at Holy Spirit Hospital, the designated crisis intervention center for Cumberland and Perry counties.

"If someone is suicidal, that is taken tremendously seriously, and it may require a hospitalization," she said. "For someone who is not having suicidal thoughts, it can be a couple weeks before they get in to see a psychiatrist."

Providing at-risk youth to prompt treatment for teen depression is an essential step in ensuring that they have the best possible chance to overcome the obstacles that are preventing them from pursuing successful and satisfying lives.

Most parents probably don't worry about depression and related mood disorders in their children until the teen years. But a new study indicates that even infants can suffer from these and other mental health problems.

A new study from Canada found that almost 15 percent of preschoolers have high levels of depression and anxiety. Children whose mothers are depressed are at high risk for the disorder, which can show up even in five-month-old babies.

Dr. Sylvana Cote of the University of Montreal and her colleagues are studied 1,758 children from Quebec for five years.

We found that lifetime maternal depression was the second most important predictor of atypically high depressive and anxiety problems during preschool years, Dr. Cote wrote. Difficult temperament at five months was the most important predictor of depression and anxiety.

The study appeared in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

A gender expert who serves as a professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks has released a study that she says documents the degree to which boys' problems are going unrecognized and untreated.

An article by Tom Spears of the Ottawa Citizen provided the following details about the controversial findings of Prof. Judith Kleinfeld:

Girls do have their troubles, she agrees: They suffer more depression, eating disorders and thoughts of suicide.

"The difficulties of boys, however, which span far more areas, have been generally ignored. It is boys who are performing at strikingly lower levels in literacy," she writes in the journal Gender Issues. It is boys who are more likely to quit school early, to be in special education, to have behaviour problems and be suspended or expelled.

Boys are far more likely to skip their homework, arrive at school without books or pencils and cause a disturbance that gets them kicked out of class. Boys are more likely to commit suicide or to be arrested.

"Policy attention has focused on the supposed underachievement of females in mathematics and science but these gender gaps are small," Prof. Kleinfeld wrote in Gender Issues. "In contrast, substantial gender gaps are occurring in reading and writing, which place males at a serious disadvantage in the employment market and in college."

A study that was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that one in five teenagers has exchanged (loaned or borrowed) prescription drugs with friends.

Dr. Richard Goldsworthy interviewed 592 children ages 12 to 17 about their use of prescription drugs. The researchers found that 32 percent of teens do not tell their doctors when they have taken a borrowed medication.

Among the many dangers of teen prescription pill abuse is that the borrowed drugs can interact with one another or with alcohol or have side effects that the users are neither aware of nor prepared for.

A study that was sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has revealed that fewer teenagers are able to buy cigarettes.

In 2008, fewer than 10 percent of retailers sold tobacco to minors, down from 40 percent in the mid-1990s.

Researchers believe the primary reason for the decrease in sales is more states are enforcing laws that are designed to keep minors from accessing tobacco.

In addition to the many health problems that are associated with teen tobacco use, researchers have also established a link between teen alcohol abuse and teen smoking.