" internalizing symptoms (withdrawal, sadness) that are often ignored and externalizing symptoms (aggression, disruptiveness) that are usually punished - earlier in the piece it says "Trevor was often punished". They also wanted to diagnose him with ODD, and talk about feelings of "rejection" he experienced. How do mental health professionals advocate for non-punitive discipline in the name of mental healthcare?
“Parents can’t fathom and don’t want to fathom their kids doing it, so they underinvest in making sure it doesn’t happen,” ... "Children are often secretive about suicidal impulses; parents are often in denial. "
This is a huge part of the angle - obviously there are interventions for kids suffering from depression and suicidality, and there are structural changes that can be made to support these kids (therapy in school, pediatricians trained in mental health assessment, etc), but the thing nobody is ever talking about is how to support and educate parents about not only what to do if this is your kid, but also how to prevent this in the first place. Where is the dissemination of information for parents about youth mental healthcare and correlates of depression/suicide? What is the way to make it so this info is not only accessible but GIVEN to parents by schools/pediatricians/???????? The only way to know the signs and not totally shut down about it (which is totally justified, that's your kid!) is to have it be a discussion thats more transparent and frequent! preventative care!!!"As early as 1996, a review of research indicated that major depressive disorder appeared to be “occurring at an earlier age in successive cohorts.”" - I wonder, surely this isn't entirely true and some of it is due to us screening more effectively at younger ages no?
Also, addendum, these stats are unbelievable to me ...
in 2020 mental-health-related visits to hospital emergency departments by people between the ages of twelve and twenty-seven were a third higher than in 2019.
during the first seven months of lockdown, U.S. hospitals experienced a twenty-four-per-cent increase in mental-health-related emergency visits for children aged five to eleven, and a thirty-one-per-cent increase for those aged twelve to seventeen
among nine- to ten-year-olds, one in twelve reported having had suicidal thoughts, and another recent study found that nearly half of parents whose adolescent children had been contemplating suicide were unaware of this