National Eating Disorder Awareness Week: Eating disorders Simplified for Teenagers

This week is National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) Awareness Week. As people work to spread the word about this noble cause I often find that we are flooded with information that can be difficult to digest at once. Sometimes it can be helpful to compile some basic information that is easy to understand and take in. So here are some of the most recent statistics and health effects of eating disorders I was able to compile as well as some simple, straight forward definitions. This information is important because eating disorders have very high mortality rates compared with other mental health disorders. Women are more likely to suffer from eating disorders but men can also be diagnosed. The last part of this blog talks about how these eating disorder may affect teenagers.

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Behind the Annoying Behaviors of Teens

You’re speaking with a teenager. Suddenly you can see they are uncomfortable with the conversation. There is a pause. They look at you as if you had a bright green ball of snot dangling from your nose and then they say in that long, drawn out, and especially obnoxious tone “awkwaaaaaaard...” Another particularly annoying and ubiquitous teenage reaction is this. You’ll be in the middle of explaining something important, something that, if the kid would only listen, could really improve his or her life and then you get it. “Whatever…”

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Video Game Addiction and Teenagers: Understanding The Allure

Teenagers have a big job to do. They have to cement their identity, gain a realistic sense of their power to make changes in their life and create a social support network where they are valued, accepted and feel like they belong to. In short they have to grow up feeling good about who they are and what they can do with their lives. However, our world is not perfect and sometimes these challenges are more than teenagers can bear. All sorts of things can go wrong with these goals that are so necessary to a being a well-adjusted and happy adult. When this happens teenagers experience themselves as depleted and long for meaning and satisfaction in their lives. This is usually what’s going on in a life of a teenager when they become addicted to video games.

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Tolerating your teen’s intense emotions and overcoming parental guilt and anger

Teenagers aren’t easy. They can be demanding, intense and moody. In the normal world of adults you have more control over how difficult people are involved in your life. When it comes to your difficult teenager there’s little choice but to be involved. So what do you do when you notice that your teenager’s words and behavior can provoke out of control and equally intense reactions in you? This is a question that I am often asked in my practice and I always say the same thing. Gain some emotional distance. Don’t take it personally and don’t expect them to behave like mature adults all the time. For me it is helpful to conceptualize your role as a parent in the following way.

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Why I do not Give a Psychological Diagnosis to my Teenage Patients

A psychological diagnosis is about meeting behavioral and emotional criteria, functioning like a check list. You look at the list of symptoms - persistent sadness, trouble sleeping, constant worrying, etc – you see how many of these symptoms the teen in question displays and if they have a certain number of them you assign the diagnosis. It is not a difficult or complicated process. It is almost exclusively descriptive and it does not contribute to my understanding of my teenage patients or how to help them. It is not useful clinically. Researchers use diagnosis as a way to run studies on large groups of people who, on the surface, have similar difficulties. Insurance companies demand the assignment of a diagnosis in order to reimburse.

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