parents – Page 2 – Licensed Mental Health Counselor

Helping Your Child Prepare For Back-To-School

9 Aug 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

It’s that time of the year again where summer is winding down and both kids and parents are either anxiously or excitedly getting ready for another school year.

Some Children will be going to school for the first time, others to a new school or riding the school bus for the first time. No matter how you look at it, for parents and children, back-to-school can be a stressful time of year.

Many parents while trying to balance work, a family and even preparing for back-to-school, often overlook their children’s anxieties about heading back to school. Without realizing it, they may be setting their kids up for emotional and behavioral failure.

It’s important that parents work with their children to build emotional resilience and help them manage their emotions in order to keep them psychological healthy and in the long run, help the parents be less stressed as well.

Children are incredibly resilient and capable of dealing with change, often more so than adults, but it’s important that parents provide an environment that fosters communication and sharing of thoughts and feelings about returning to school. Establishing this type of environment where sharing thoughts and feelings about school are encourage will also foster a healthier relationship overall between parent and child.

There are many things you can do to help prepare your child emotionally and psychologically for returning to school. The American Psychological Association (APA) offers the following tips:

Practice the first day of school routine: Getting into a sleep routine before the first week of school will aide in easing the shock of waking up early. Organizing things at home—backpack, binder, lunchbox or cafeteria money—will help make the first morning go smoothly. Having healthy, yet kid-friendly lunches will help keep them energized throughout the day. Also, walking through the building and visiting your child’s locker and classroom will help ease anxiety of the unknown.
Get to know your neighbors: If your child is starting a new school, walk around your block and get to know the neighborhood children. Try and set up a play date, or, for an older child, find out where neighborhood kids might go to safely hang out, like the community pool, recreation center or park.
Talk to your child: Asking your children about their fears or worries about going back to school will help them share their burden. Inquire as to what they liked about their previous school or grade and see how those positives can be incorporated into their new experience.
Empathize with your children: Change can be difficult, but also exciting. Let your children know that you are aware of what they’re going through and that you will be there to help them in the process. Nerves are normal, but highlight that not everything that is different is necessarily bad. It is important to encourage your children to face their fears instead of falling in to the trap of encouraging avoidance.
Get involved and ask for help: Knowledge of the school and the community will better equip you to understand your child’s surroundings and the transition he or she is undergoing. Meeting members of your community and school will foster support for both you and your child. If you feel the stress of the school year is too much for you and your child to handle on your own, seeking expert advice from a mental health professional, such as a psychologist, will help you better manage and cope.

Popular Psychology

Defending Fatherhood: The Impact Of Fathers And Father Figures On Children

2 Jul 20142 Jul 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC1 Comment

The other day I came across a clip of actor Terry Crews as a guest on the show The View. In the clip, Terry Crews was basically defending fatherhood and I was somewhat amazed at how at times it seemed like one or more of the hosts of The View kept trying to attack fatherhood (the clip is at the end of the page). I realized that fatherhood in general is greatly under valued in today’s society.

So many of us have grown up without reliable fathers or father figures in our lives that we diminish the importance of fathers. So many women have been forced to raise children without a decent man in their children’s lives that they start to believe that a child having a father or father figure is an option that they’d prefer to do without.

As men we have to take some blame in this. Many of us have let or children and women down so much that we are considered elective pieces of the family dynamic and are often made to feel that way. Some women will try so hard to prove that they don’t need a man that they will also imply that their children don’t need a father either.

I’m not just talking about single mothers either. Even in marriages the father is often relegated to a relatively small role in raising the children. Sometimes fathers withdraw nearly completely from the task of helping raise the children, believing that child-rearing is a woman’s job and all they have to do is provide.

And while many single mothers do awesome jobs raising well-rounded children, especially the ones that have to, more often than not, those children struggle from the absence of a strong, positive male role model in their lives.

I am not saying that any man will do. Some men are bad fathers, bad role models or just bad people in general. They will do more harm to a child’s development than good. However, there are many good men who want and try to be good fathers, but are limited or not allowed to because of their child’s mother.

When I worked as a children’s therapist I ran into many women who moved multiple states away just to punish their child’s father. They were mad at him for whatever reason and decided to not only distance themselves from him, but to distance him from his children as punishment.

Many single mothers push their child’s father away either by making it extremely hard on him to see his children, or by turning the children against him. They want to make the father feel unwanted and unneeded and if the man isn’t strong enough, he may give up and walk away or greatly diminish his involvement in his child’s life.

Most of the times these children not only suffered from behavioral problems like stress, depression and anxiety, but many of them, especially the young boys ended up acting out in ways that the mother couldn’t handle, especially as they got bigger.

Many of the boys became disrespectful to the mother and women in general. They did poorly in school, got in trouble with the law and basically became unruly and why wouldn’t they? They were trying to figure out how to grow into a man without any decent examples and so they come up with their own, either modeling other young men, poor examples from their neighborhoods, or rappers, athletes or other celebrities.

Some of these same women often sent their boys back to live with their fathers once they got too out of hand, but by then the father-child bond has usually been so disrupted that the father doesn’t know how to effectively parent that child and the child has little understanding or respect for a parent who has been absent from their lives over a period of time.

While I feel that it is extra important that boys have a good male role model, no matter if it’s their biological father, stepfather, uncle, coach, teacher or any other reliable, nurturing, male, it is important that girls have a father figure as well as I wrote in my post absent fathers can lead to depression in teenage girls.

Healthy and respectful male role models can teach young girls how they should expect men to treat them. While at the same time, even fathers who are in the house that are angry and disrespectful to the mother are more likely to have children that develop anxiety, are withdrawn and are more likely to have unhealthy relationships.

So you see, it’s not just about having a man around, it has to be someone who is giving positively to the child’s social-emotional well-being.

Dr. David Popenoe, one of the pioneers of the young field of research into fathers and fatherhood says, “Involved fathers bring positive benefits to their children that no other person is as likely to bring.”

Involved fathers have an impact on a child’s emotional health, cognitive ability and educational outcomes.

Children with involved and nurturing fathers are more likely to be emotionally secure, confident, willing to explore their surroundings and end up with better social relationships. They are less likely to get in trouble at school, have disruptive behaviors or develop anxiety and depression.

Studies suggest that fathers who are nurturing, involved and playful with their infants end up having children with better linguistic skills, cognitive skills and higher IQs.

Toddlers with involved fathers tend to start school more academically ready, more patient and less likely to get frustrated or stressed when compared to toddlers with absent fathers or fathers who aren’t involved.

Adolescents and teenagers with involved, active and nurturing fathers tend to have better intellectual functioning, better verbal skills and higher academic achievement.

All of these benefits are amplified if that involved, nurturing male is the biological father, but it doesn’t have to be in order to still see positive benefits.

I’m not saying that any man will do, or even any biological father because any idiot can become a dad, it doesn’t mean that they will be the best role model for a child. What I am saying is that having a father figure is just as important as having a mother figure for every child. Fathers have a powerful and important impact on the development and health of a child.

Uncategorized

Father’s Day Message To Dads

15 Jun 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

Father’s Day Message To Dads.

Popular Psychology

The True Toll Of War

20 Mar 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

I’ve written before about the affects of war on our veterans. About how on average 22 veterans kill themselves everyday, many suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, physical injuries, substance abuse, depression and other mental stressors. However, what is rarely talked about is wars toll on the families of veterans.

Many military spouses, children, even siblings and parents end up suffering when their loved ones are deployed and sadly, many of them end up killing themselves as well. Exactly how many is unknown as that record is not yet being kept the way the number of veterans who commit suicide is, yet it is an issue that needs to be tackled.

Deployment after deployment can take its toll on any veteran and his or her family. The fear, trauma, uncertainty, pressure and strain can be too much for some of them to bear. Many are left feeling exhausted, isolated and desperate.

Multiple deployments can leave a family feeling despondent. Many families end up emotionally and financially shattered as they take care of injured veterans with physical and or emotional wounds that can take their toll over time. Some are so grief stricken over the loss of a loved one at war, that they themselves can’t stand to live.

I am not saying that stress, plus deployment equals suicide. Suicide is much more complicated than that. The combination of reasons a person commits suicide is different for each individual. There are many military families who deal with war, injury and death fairly well and show great resilience.

However, when it comes to suicide there are usually many underlying factors such as a wife who was already depressed and gets extremely depressed when her husband is deployed. Alone and depressed, she may be more tempted to take her own life.

Many family members get severely depressed when their loved one is deployed, but fail to seek mental health help out of fear that it will jeopardize the career of their loved one. After all, they are supposed to be the strong ones, supporting their family members at war. However, they too suffer.

Many who sought help felt like they did not get adequate treatment. Some confided in their doctors only to receive medication with no counseling or follow up care.

Take Faye Vick for example, a 36-year-old Army wife of a newborn and 2-year-old who killed herself and both kids by asphyxiation in her car while her husband was deployed.

Cassey Walton, a wife of an Iraq vet who killed himself outside his home in 2007, shot and killed herself just days later wearing her husbands fatigue jacket and dog tags.

Monique Lingenfelter, the wife of a sergeant, barricaded herself in her home and killed herself and her baby despite police trying for hours to persuade her to come out.

Sheena Griffin told her husband while he was away at Fort Hood preparing to be deployed to Afghanistan, that she wanted to kill herself and their 8 and 9-year-old sons. By the time he called police and they arrived to her house, the home was already engulfed in flames and Sheena and her two sons were both dead.

And then there is Jessica Harp who wrote a nearly 4,000 page suicide letter that went viral, detailing how her marriage had deteriorated after her husband served in the war.

According to Harp, her husband came back changed, drinking, impulsive and most likely suffering from PTSD. She said that if her husband had died she would have been surrounded with support, but because he wasn’t dead physically, but wounded mentally, there was little to no support and the weight and emotional strain was too much for her to bear.

Harp didn’t kill herself. Her letter was preprogrammed to be sent out, but she ended up in a local hospital instead of killing herself.

Melinda Moore, a researcher at the University of Kentucky says, “The service member is like a pebble in a pool, the pain a person carries affects everyone around them. Trauma ripples outward.”

You can see these affects on their spouses, their children, other family members and even friends before, during and after deployment. War has a way of changing people. The person who left isn’t always the person that comes back and this has an affect on the entire family unit from parents, to spouses and kids.

The number of military family members who have killed themselves or attempted to kill themselves is unknown, because it isn’t being tracked, something I hope will change soon. In 2009 there were 9 confirmed suicides of service family members and “too many to count” attempted suicides in just the army alone according to Army officials.

The way we treat our veterans who come back from war has to be holistic, meaning that we treat not only the veterans, but those are are closes to them as well in order to keep families together, people mentally health and a live.

If you or anyone you know who is a family member, spouse or even friend of a service member and you need help, here’s a list of resources.

Veterans Crisis Line- A 24/7 hotline open to family members of all armed forces: 1-800-273-8255 and press 1

For nonemergency help try TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors): 1-800-959-TAPS (8277)

Military OneSource- provides counseling referrals and assistance with all needs of military life including mental health: 1-800-342-9647

Popular Psychology

Social-Emotional Development in Children Zero to Five: Part 1

16 Mar 201416 Mar 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC3 Comments

Over the next few weeks, I will be covering some information on social-emotional development and mental health for children 0 to 5 years of age. The reason for this is not only because I have my own seven month old son, but because of my new position as a children therapist.

In the last month or so in my new position, I have come across a handful of patients aged 2 to 4 and have had some difficulty trying to figure out the best way to treat them. It’s one thing to work with children, it’s another thing to work with the smallest of children who generally have no idea what they are doing and why they are doing it and their parents have already given up on them.

I’ve seen parents with 2 year old children, reporting signs of hyperactivity, inattention, defiance, aggression, you name it. They insisted that their child was different then all other children, out of control and demanded medication. And I’ve seen these kids, 2 to 5 year old kids who definitely were expressing signs and symptoms not typical of the average child.

In many of these cases, it ends up being the parent that needs the most help, either counseling themselves or parent skill training to learn how to deal with their children and curve unwanted behaviors. Still, in a few of these cases, it was obvious that there had been some type of trauma in the very early years of these kids lives. Trauma that remained unprocessed and so the child was dealing with the trauma in the best way they knew how, acting out.

Most of the time, finding out this information is not easy because the parents either don’t tell you the information or they didn’t even recognize that the traumatic event was actually traumatic for the child. Many parents believe that children 0 to 5 aren’t affected by certain events, especially younger children 0 to 2. In reality, even in utero, children can be affected by stressors their mom goes through.

For instance, when I talk to the moms of many of the children I work with who are 0 to 5, I find out that many of them were in abusive relationships during their pregnancy and afterwards. Many of them got abused regularly in front of their infants and young children, not thinking this would have an affect on them. Many of them yelled and screamed with their partners or other family members regularly with their child in their arms.

These things can have a really big affect on their child which is why I suspect, at least in part, is why their children now are “out of control”. They have experienced a lot of stuff, emotions, things that may not seem like trauma to us adults, but can be traumatic experiences to the child, and they don’t know what to do with it. They lack the ability to communicate like adults so they internalize it and express it the best way they know how which can look like disruptive behavior.

Another two year old I saw, his mom had no idea why he was so “wired” and screamed all the time. She pretty much said he was born that way, but I knew that wasn’t likely the case. After much probing and counseling, I eventually found out that this mom too had been in an abusive relationship throughout her whole pregnancy and afterwards. As a matter of fact, her baby was in a car seat when the father was driving and beating on her at the same time. They ended up getting into a bad car accident where the baby somehow ended up flying unto the floor and stuck under the passenger seat of the car for nearly half an hour until he was freed by firefighters. If that wasn’t traumatic enough, he ended up spending 3 months in the hospital recovering from his broken bones and internal injuries. Yet, this mother didn’t think that this had any affect on her 2 year old childs’ current behavior until I brought this to her attention.

Without going into the neuroscience behind it (at least not at the moment), the brain is always changing and young brains are changing and developing the most. Experiences are the one of the things that change the brain the most, causing the actual brain structure to change.

Everything we experience from sights, to sounds, the people we love, the emotions we feel, event the music we listen to and the books we read, affect the way our brain develops and this is especially true in children 0 to 5.In the next part of this series we will continue to explore behavior, parenting and early social and emotional development and ways parents can nurture social and emotional skills in children 0 to 5.

Popular Psychology

Childrens Therapist: Yep That’s Me!

14 Feb 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

I like to share with my readers whenever anything changes or happens that I think is appropriate for you to know and recently I got a new job title, childrens therapist.

It’s funny how the universe works. Sometimes the more you try to avoid doing or dealing with something, the more you end up on a collision course to face it head on. That’s how I feel right now. I’ve been working in the field of counseling and psychology since 2006 and started off working with adults. In 2010 I started working with teenagers in an inner-city high school and absolutely loved it.

Around the same time I was offered an opportunity to work with younger kids, but cringed at the idea of doing therapy with kids who had trouble verbalizing and processing. Things such as play therapy were very foreign to me and when I started doing some in-home counseling I started seeing a few kids that were between the ages of 10 and 12. I quickly referred them out feeling both uncomfortable and unprepared to work with kids that young.

Well recently I changed jobs. I was looking to work more with clients and wanted to work with adults, but ended up landing a job as a childrens therapist within the last two weeks. I already have 10 clients, ranging from the ages of 4 to 14. A four year old! Supposedly he has ADHD, and that may be the case, but I’ve met his parents and I am sure that their parenting skills aren’t the best so maybe with some parent training they’ll learn hoow to deal with him better and help shape him so that he doesn’t get stuck with the diagnosis of ADHD if it isn’t really appropriate.

I’m also being used in the capacity of a licensed evaluator to evaluate and diagnose kids who aren’t on my case load and have been giving the responsibilty of working with all the kids that are referred to the program through the department of juvenile justice.

It’s a bit overwhelming, challenging and exciting because there is so much I have to learn so that I can help these kids and their parents, especially the younger ones that traditional talk therapy doesn’t work with.

Earlier this week I was sitting with a 10 year old girl and we were doing pretty good. We were doing traditional talk therapy and she seemed to be doing fine with it and I remember thinking, “this isn’t so bad”, but about halfway through it she asked “can we color”. I was thrown off for a second, but then laughed to myself as I remembered she was a kid and told her “yes we can color”. And so we colored, and talked and it was pretty cool!

I have my first child who just turned 6 months over the weekend and here I am being thrown into the role of a childrens therapist. It’s like the universe had this whole thing set up and sometimes that’s just the way I think life works. At the same time, it’s forcing me to get out of my comfort zone, something I am always telling clients to do and I have so much I have to learn that I feel like a student again.

I have read this great book I have talked about before called The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories From a Child Psychiatrists’ Note Book by Bruce Perry. It is a book that talks about the horrific effects of childhood trauma, some intentional, and some unintentional in the form of neglect and ignorance.

As I revisit that book, it helps me put into focus the importance of the work I can do with these children. Yes, many of them have genetic predispositions to things like ADHD and mood disorders, but a lot of them are being raised by people and in environments that are causing them to respond a certain way.

It is my job if I can, to help correct this through therapy and parent education so that these kids have the best opportunity possible to turn into healthy children and eventually successful adults.

In the book, there is one story about a boy who was being raised mostly by a mother who had some type of mental disorder so while she took care of the child, he basically stayed alone in his crib without any interaction for 6 to 8 hours a day. He learned not to cry because no one was coming to help him. He grew up with unable to have feelings for other people and as an older teen, eventually murder two girls, raped their dead bodies and then stomped on them. Even in prison he showed no remorse and blamed the girls for not allowing him to do whatever he wanted to do. He didn’t even have any regrets other than getting caught.

Some of the kids I’ve seen, the parents have already written them off as bad apples and just want them put on medication so that they don’t have to deal with them. I can see that if these kids aren’t shown love, support, guidance and limitations, they will grow up to be criminals or in the very less, incapable of having healthy relationships with anyone.

Also, they have already gave me some great blog ideas. I’ve already unfortunately diagnosed some of them with ADHD, mood disorder, anxiety disorder, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and pervasive developmental disorder.

These may just be another stop on my journey to become the best overall therapist I can be, but I am going to cherish and learn from every moment and experience and do the absolute best I can to make a difference in each childs life. I’ll keep you guys posted along the way.

Study Links Shows Like 16 And Pregnant To A Drop in Teenage Pregnancy

16 Jan 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

There have been times I’ve been critical of shows like 16 and Pregnant because I thought that they glamorize teenage pregnancy by exploiting the teenage girls on the show and even making celebrities out of some of them.

Having worked in a high school in the past with a fairly high rate of teenage pregnancy, I knew that teenage pregnancy wasn’t glamorise at all. All of the girls I worked with in the high school who became pregnant eventually dropped out. Some dropped out only to have another kid a year later.

In my article Young, Poor and Pregnant I discuss some of the downsides of programming like 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom, but a new study called “Media Influences on Social Outcomes: The Impact of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant on Teen Childbearing” which was written by Melissa S. Kearny of the University of Maryland and Phillip B. Levine from Wellesley College, found that 18 months after the shows introduction, teen birth rates actually dropped 5.7 percent in 2010. According the New York Times, that 5.7 drop is an estimated 20,000 teenage births prevented.

The study also showed that using Neilson ratings, in areas where the show was highly popular, the rates of teenage pregnancies declined the fastest.

During their study, the authors found that search engine searches and tweets about birth control and abortion grew significantly after the show was introduced. While I have written about some of the negatives of the show, I was surprised and happy to see that it had benefits that show that teenage girls aren’t as brainwashed and reality TV obsessed as some of us adults like to think. In fact, the study shows that many teenage girls can look at shows like this and not glamorize it, but recognize that they don’t want their lives to be as complicated, crazy or hard as most of the teenage moms on the shows.

One of the benefits of shows about teenage mothers is that they discuss an issue that is often shied away from and more accurately show the true effects of being a teenage mom, better than any sex education class or most lectures could. No one is totally crediting shows about teenage moms as the sole reason for the decline in teenage pregnancy. The rate of teenage pregnancy has been on the decline over the last 20 years and things such as the recession also bring the birth rate down.

However, what the show does do is make it more real so that teens can see that real teenage motherhood may not be the fairytale that they may imagine it will be (“now he will stay with me”, “I’ll feel more loved and supported”, etc.). These shows alone aren’t enough to continue to prevent teenage pregnancy. There still needs to be good sex education and parental guidance. One potential negative of the show is that in the study there was a trend for teenage girls who watched the show heavily to perceive the teenage mothers as having easier lives and still have time to be a kid, which usually isn’t the reality. For the most part, the one thing we can take away from this study is that teenage girls are more capable of learning from other teenagers mistakes than we may have given them credit for in the face of so much reality TV where the bad girls are celebrated and consequences seem few and far between.

How Your Teen Gets In Their Own Way And How To Help Them Stop Sabatoging Themselves

11 Nov 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC5 Comments

Working with teenagers for as long as I have, I realize that many of them come with various challenges, from emotional and educational challenges to family issues that seem to drag them down. However, in a majority of the cases I’ve worked with, the teens themselves are usually the ones who are getting in their own way of success and happiness.

They often don’t see it that way and will blame their family, their friends, their environment, any and everything, but themselves and it will take many sessions before I am able to help them realize that they themselves are indeed the cause of their problems through self-destructive and self-defeating behaviors and thus are also the answer to their problems.

Most people who have been around adolescence know that many times they get in their own way and do things that are self-defeating or self-destructive. Self-defeating behaviors are behaviors that get in the way of constructive action while self-destructive behavior generally causes some type of harm to the person.

In early adolescence for example, teens often start focusing more on friends, fighting with their parents and other adults as they try to discover their own identity and may end up struggling in school in response to paying more attention to friends than to their grades.

During this time of conflict, (ages 9-13), it is common for certain self-injurious behaviors to start occurring, such as cutting as a way to deal with much of the psychological conflict and pain, especially with teenager girls while teenage boys may do things such as punching walls, getting into fights or destroying property even if it’s their own.

During mid adolescence, ages 13-15, friends are generally ultra important and so is being accepted by your peers. This is the age that teens are going to high school for the first time and can be overwhelmed by the pressure to fit in.

When a teenagers faces feelings of inadequacy about their self-image they may shy away from their peers and develop anxiety issues and/or depression or even self-destructive behaviors such as eating disorders and suicidal thoughts.

During late adolescence, ages 15-18, teenagers may engage in self-defeating behaviors that include more risk taking such as drugs, alcohol, and sex simply for the excitement of it and not considering the dangers that can happen.

This is the age that I worked with the most to either help them stop drinking or using drugs, or to help them with issues surrounding sex including pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and even rape.

As someone who has worked with teens for a long time, it can be very frustrating to see a young lady with endless potential, waste it because she wants to be liked by her friends or a boy or she doesn’t like herself. The same rings true for many of the young men I worked with who were more concerned about having a “tough guy” image, than actually doing something positive with their lives.

Parents indeed find this self-defeating and self-destructive behavior frustrating, but what can they do? Often times teenagers are too defensive to actually take and listen to advice from their parents so parents often would bring their children to me and then wonder what it was about me, or what did I say that got through to their teenager that they couldn’t and I would always tell them that they had to practice objective parenting.

They had to work on not telling their teenager what to do and think or what not to do or think, to not judge, but instead simply draw conclusion between their choices and the consequences of their choices in an empathetic and objective way, and then let their teen decide to either continue the behavior or to try something different.

This is often hard for parents to do because they would like to control their teenagers choices, but they can’t. They have to allow their teenager to make their own choices, however, parents can continuously attempt to put healthier and more constructive choices in front of their teenager for them to accept or not to accept.

The more healthy options you place in front of a teen, the more likely they are to accept at least some of them. As a therapist that is what I did. I would know that I wanted a teen to stop doing a particular self-destructive or self-defeating behavior, I would share my observations about what they are doing and what they are getting (or not getting) from their actions and then attempt to continuously give them multiple alternatives in hopes that they would try at least one.

For example, one teenage girl was obsessed with trying to get pregnant simply because she wanted a baby. I tried to help her see how having a baby would hinder many of her plans and goals for the future, but she didn’t really see that. I then gave her many other things she could be doing instead of trying to get pregnant and she finally decided to try one which is playing softball. She tried out for the team, made the team and two years later graduated from high school with a scholarship to play softball and never got pregnant.

While her mother thought I had worked some type of miracle (she was sure her daughter wouldn’t finish high school without getting pregnant) all I did was give her an opportunity to try something new and that ended up being self-affirming and she basically did the rest.

As a therapist, it is easy for me to be non-judgmental, to allow teenagers to continue making mistakes and learning from them while still giving them healthy alternatives until they finally realize that what they are doing isn’t working and are ready to try something different.

For parents, it’s hard for them to have that same amount of patience because the attachment they have with their teen makes it much more painful for them to witness their teenager continuously sabotage themselves by making poor choices. It’s very difficult for them to be as objective as I try to be.

Because this is very difficult for most parents to do, seeking help from a therapist is often the best solution, especially if the behavior is self-destructive such as cutting, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, etc.

A book I recommend for teenagers who are constantly self-sabotaging themselves is How to Get Out of Your Own Way by Tyrese Gibson.

Popular Psychology

Absent Fathers Can Lead To Depression In Teenage Girls

5 Jun 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC7 Comments

Father’s Day is coming up and I recently read a study out of the United Kingdom published in the journal Psychological Medicine that suggests that young girls who grow up without their fathers turn into depressed teenagers later in life.

It’s well known that depression tends to effect teenage girls much more than teenage boys and that trend stays the same throughout adulthood. New research is suggesting that when young girls grow up without their fathers, the risk of depression increases with 23% of teenage girls showing signs of tiredness or sadness if they’re separated from their father before the age of five.

According to the study, it also makes them 50% more likely to develop other mental health problems compared to girls whose fathers remained in their lives.

Preschoolers are especially vulnerable with dealing with divorce and separation poorly because they generally do not have a support system of peers or family members.

I took a quick survey of five teenage girls I am working with who have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, bulimia and substance abuse and four out of five of them were abandoned by or separated from their father at an early age. Some through death, others through divorce or separation.

Many of the teenage girls I work with are suffering from “daddy issues” and are dealing with them in unhealthy ways. Some through self-hatred, others through drugs and alcohol or being extremely promiscuous and unstable in terms of dating and relationships.

Boys tend to handle absent fathers better according to the study, but I would like to suggest that they just express themselves differently and may not show signs of depression we typically look for. Instead boys may be angry, “troubled kids”, or become more withdrawn and reckless. I also think boys have more outlets to let out their frustrations through rough housing, sports and other physical activities.

Both older boys and girls tend to handle separation and divorce better with less instances of depression later in their teenage years, but working with teenagers I have no doubt that the effects of growing up without an attentive and active father are powerful and far reaching.

This is not to say that separation from their father at an early age definitely leads to depression in teenage girls. There are too many other factors such as economic and social factors that also need to be taken into consideration. Also, girls tend to be more susceptible to personal negative events than boys which can lead to episodes of depression.

I think the take away from this research is not to stay in unhealthy or undesired relationships for the sake of the children because that can also have detrimental effects, but I think it suggests that we need to pay closer attention to young girls who have been separated from their fathers as parents and as those who work with children.

Fathers should stick around and be active in their daughters lives, even if the relationship with the mother has failed. A lot of time men think that they don’t have to be as involved with their daughters, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Mothers on the other hand shouldn’t gloss over the fact that their young girl is growing up without a father and should start looking for signs of emotional or behavioral stress or changes that may warrant attention such as individual, family or group counseling.

The most erratic and unstable young women I work with tend to be the ones who grew up without their fathers and I can only wonder that if they still had good relationships with an active and supportive father, if they wouldn’t be more stable and focused.

Popular Psychology

How The Mental Health System Is Failing Minorities

3 Jun 20133 Jun 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC3 Comments

I’ve wrote a bit about how the mental health system is failing those who need it most and a lot of those people are usually poor and/or minorities.

Working in an inner-city area I’ve always been valued as a licensed mental health counselor able to diagnose and treat a wide array of mental issues and refer clients who needed more attention, testing or medication to people and places able to provide those services.

Sometimes I didn’t quite appreciate or understand the praises I got from other school administrators, faculty even clients and their families. To me I was just doing my job, but to them, at times I was seen as a hero.

It wasn’t until recently that I actually thought about this. Within the past year two crucial agencies pulled out of the school because of lack of funding. These two services provided mental health counseling to the students who needed it three days out of the week while I was there everyday. They were not licensed and generally dealt with less severe, but no less important issues.

Because these two agencies are no longer on campus, this year my case load exploded to way more then I could handle by myself, but I had no choice but to try to handle it the best I could which at times wasn’t always that great. I was overwhelmed, underpaid and under appreciated by the agency I work for, but very much appreciated by the school, students and families I served.

To make things worse, I may not be at the school after the end of this month because funding is being cut from my agency as well.

While to me it is ultra important that these kids and families receive my services, like I wrote in my previous post, it boils down to money over actual quality of care.

It was then that I started realizing that there weren’t many options for those in inner-city communities who need mental health services, largely because poor and minority people with mental illnesses are more neglected and inner-city communities receive less funding which is one reason the two agencies I mentioned above pulled out of the school I work at, they lost some of their funding.

A lot of the funding that comes for mental health servies in inner-city communities is based on grants, and grants come and go very easily, often doing great work in a community for a couple of years and then leaving them without any support.

With that being said, it’s really hard for the kids I work with and their parents to receive quality mental health services in their community.

Many of them end up getting services through the jail or prison or are involved with child protective services which is where many of them end up because they have issues such as uncontrollable behavior that haven’t been addressed, but this creates a host of other problems due to the stigma that comes with it and because it eternalizes a racial stereotype that this is where Black people end up.

However, once these people are no longer incarcerated or receiving services through child protection services, without support, most will regress back to their previous mental states and behaviors. Only about 33% of African Americans suffering from a mental illness are retrieving proper treatment.

Because of this neglect, there isn’t much research on treating minorities with mental disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, substance abuse and others conditions.

Yes, it is true that for the most part, there is little to no difference in these disorders across races or socio-economic statuses, but there are cultural and social differences that play major roles in properly treating these disorders.

African Americans have been ignored for decades when it comes to mental health. Before the 1960s, it was believed that African Americans could not get bipolar disorder or depression for example. It wasn’t until 2001 when former Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher, who is African American, released Culture, Race and Ethnicity. A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, which brought the disparities into national light.

Working with minorities from African Americans, Haitians, Latinos and Asians, I know that culture plays a large role in who and how individuals receive mental health services.

Some cultures are very private and trying to get the whole family together for a session can be almost impossible, while others, especially African Americans, seem to be more suspicious of the mental health system in general and are more likely to stop treatment early without any follow up and to not follow through on medication recommendations.

Because of this distrust, many will turn to a friend, then their pastor, and then their general doctor before finally turning to a mental health professional for help with a disorder.

Because of all these issues, I see why my role within the school I work with is seen as so important. I am able to bond with the students and give them and their families services that they may not otherwise receive.

On top of that, I think I am helping to remove some of the stigma associated with getting help for a mental health problem.

Many of my minority clients, when I first meet with them automatically tell me that they are not going to take any medication or go to the mental hospital, as if that’s all those who work in the mental health field do, medicate people or hospitalize them.

Through getting to know me, they realize that I just want to help them get through whatever is bothering them and I have no plot to medicate them or put them in a mental hospital unless it is absolutely necessary.

One of the students told me last week when I told her I wasn’t sure if I would be back next school year that, “If you are not here, there will be more kids going crazy, more people fighting and using drugs”. That thought saddened me. I even thought about volunteering some of my time to the students if at all possible.

I am not a hero, I am really just doing my job and doing what I feel called to do, but I see that without my services being conveniently offered on campus where students and their families can easily access them, there isn’t much else around. Unlike in more oppulent areas, there aren’t any private facilities with modern technology. There’s nothing.

So yes, the mental health system is failing most people who truly need it, especially minorities and poor people who are largely ignored and underserved including teenagers just trying to survive in a violent, crime ridden neighborhood at an inner-city school that serves as their haven away from their broken homes and communities.