How Parents Should Cope with Troubled Teenagers

Medicating Children in a Medication Filled World

It's something every adult has experience with - being a teenager. The teenage years can be filled with angst, turmoil and change. Subsequently, your teenager may display erratic behavior and mood changes. Your teenager may experiment with alcohol, cigarettes, other tobacco or drugs. Such experimentation may add to your teenagers' woes, often making it difficult to cope with the young people developing from children into adults. While there are many coping mechanisms - including communication and letting time work its' course - please don't jump to any conclusions, when determining how to cope with a troubled teenager.

According to the article "The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise" in the February, 2008 issue of Scientific American Mind, "A study of antidepressant use in private health insurance plans by the New England Research Institute found that 43 percent of those who had been prescribed antidepressants had no psychiatric diagnosis or any mental health care beyond the prescription of the drug." Similarly, parents should not jump on the medication bandwagon when turmoil and hardship strikes their family or the increasing number of Americans taking anti-depressants and other prescription drugs will continue to rise, as it has been doing. According to the same Scientific American Mind article, eleven percent of women were taking anti-depressants as of 2007.

While prescription medications have their place, there are many steps that should be taken by parents for teenagers before resorting to prescription medications. There is no real negative consequence to trying to cope without utilizing prescription drugs. However, using medications prematurely can have a variety of negative side effects. According to the aforementioned article, "A 2004 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that 'the risk of suicidal behavior is increased in the first month after starting antidepressants, especially during the first one to nine days.'"