Cynthia S. Kaplan - Helping Your Troubled Teen: Learn to Recognize, Understand, and Address the Destructive Behavior of Todays Teens and Preteens

HELPING YOUR TROUBLED TEEN

CYNTHIA S. KAPLAN, PH.D.
BLAISE A. AGUIRRE, M.D.
MICHAEL RATER, M.D.

FOREWORD BY ROBERT BROOKS, Ph.D.

Text 2007 Cynthia S. Kaplan, Blaise A. Aguirre, and Michael Rater

First published in the USA in 2007 by
Fair Winds Press, a member of
Quayside Publishing Group
100 Cummings Center
Suite 406-L
Beverly, MA 01915-6101

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5

Digital edition: 978-1-61673-427-5
Hardcover edition: 978-1-59233-262-5
ISBN-10: 1-59233-262-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Helping your troubled teen : learn to recognize, understand, and address the destructive behavior of todays teens / [edited by] Cynthia Kaplan.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-59233-262-5 (pbk.)

1. Adolescence. 2. Teenagers. 3. Adolescent psychology. 4. Behavior disorder in adolescence. I. Kaplan, Cynthia (Cynthia Sue)

HQ796.H3963 2007

616.8900835--dc22

2007011859

Cover design by Howard Grossman / 12E Design

Book design by Sandra Salamony

The information in this book is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to replace the advice of a physician or medical practitioner. Please see your health care provider before beginning any new health program.

Dedication

To our children,

Alex, Nick, Emma, Wes, Olivia, Max, Henry, Sam, Isabel, Anthony, Lucas, and Gabriel, who provide each of us with the continued inspiration to do our daily work.

We also dedicate this book to the countless children and families who struggle bravely to overcome often-colossal social obstacles and enormous emotional challenges to live better, healthier lives.

CHAPTER 1: The Modern Adolescents World
Cynthia S. Kaplan, Ph.D.

CHAPTER 2: An Overview of Adolescent Development
Roya Ostovar, Ph.D.

CHAPTER 3: Adolescent Depression
Michael Rater, M.D., and Ken Sklar, Ed.D., LICSW

CHAPTER 4: When Your Teen Cuts
Michael Hollander, Ph.D.

CHAPTER 5: Teens and Substances
Richard L. Falzone, M.D.

CHAPTER 6: When Your Teens Eating Becomes a Problem
Thomas J. Weigel, M.D.

CHAPTER 7: Teens and Delinquency
Ben Molbert, M.D.

CHAPTER 8: Technology and Your Teen
Blaise Aguirre, M.D.

CHAPTER 9: Voices of Troubled Teens
Cynthia S. Kaplan, Ph.D.

CHAPTER 10: Parents as Part of the Recovery Process
Sue Mandelbaum-Cohen, LICSW

CHAPTER 11: Parents as Advocates for Their Children
Lisa Lambert

CHAPTER 12: Treatments that Work
Joseph Gold, M.D.

Epilogue
Cynthia S. Kaplan, Ph.D., and Sue Mandelbaum-Cohen, LICSW

RAISING AND WORKING WITH ADOLESCENTS in todays world is a challenging task, leaving many adults bewildered and confused about the most effective ways to interact with teens. Many parents question how effective they can be in their role, especially given the prominent external influences impinging on their adolescents, including technology and the Internet. The challenge is rendered even more daunting when adolescents display troubling emotions and behaviors such as substance abuse, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and self-destructive actions, including suicide attempts and cutting themselves.

Helping Your Troubled Teen is an invaluable resource for both parents and professionals in understanding the teens of today, the problems they manifest, and ways to intervene to help them cope more successfully with the struggles they face. The authors are experienced, skilled clinicians who work with many youths who display problematic behaviors. What they have learned from these youths is evident on every page of this remarkable book. Their empathy, their appreciation of what these youths (and their parents) are experiencing, and their clinical expertise in applying innovative treatment approaches are very impressive and will be very helpful to the reader. This is a book I recommend highly to both parents and professionals involved in raising or working with struggling teens. The authors are to be applauded for conveying their ideas in such an informative and caring manner.

Robert Brooks, Ph.D.
Co-author of Raising Resilient Children

Cynthia S. Kaplan, Ph.D.

THE NUMBER OF TEENAGERS who require psychological help and support has increased dramatically over the past several years. Not only have the numbers of youths and their families seeking professional help swelled, but the range and types of problems they exhibit have also significantly changed.

The same holds true for accounts from communities where complaints abound from parents, school officials, and others who say there are many more teens with problems today than in the past and that they often dont respond to traditional practices and interventions. An example of this shift is exemplified by grievances from school guidance counselors with whom we interact on a daily basis. Many say that a decade ago they worked with approximately 10 percent of their students on noncollege-related issues. Today, most school personnel report that closer to 70 percent of students come to the guidance departments attention at some time over issues surrounding divorce, blended families, drugs and alcohol, self-harming behaviors, eating issues, and online offenses. Schools, thus, no longer deal exclusively with educational problems but have also become the landscape upon which many adolescents social, emotional, and behavioral problems become both apparent and ultimately disruptive.

In the past, adolescents most often sought help for what was traditionally thought of as mental illness, which included hearing voices, extreme depression, suicidal behaviors, or a lack of functioning and self-preservation. These days, teens are just as likely to seek help for drug problems, promiscuity, legal difficulties, or Internet transgressions as they are for conditions traditionally thought of as mental illness.

In addition, from 1991 to 2003, the percentage of students who exhibited injurious suicidal attempts doubled, with the highest incidence among ninth graders, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

No longer do the once well-established demarcations between emotional health and sickness hold the same significance. There is no longer an obvious biological presentation or genesis to the majority of mental and behavioral health problems we see. For example, a teenager seeking help may not be hearing voices or experiencing unprovoked mood deregulation but may have been threatening a peer or teacher online or trading drugs in school. These are often problems that either would not have occurred or been possible in the past, or that would have been dealt with in a disciplinary rather than a therapeutic fashion. The problem these days is that many of these behavioral difficulties we see are both manifestations of underlying emotional problems as well as responses to external stress that, if left untreated or simply treated with punishment, will likely worsen.

And while some adolescents undeniably skate through their teenage years without major difficulty, many more fail to manage this transition without encountering trouble. To what can we attribute this change in both prevalence and presentation? And what can parents and concerned adults do to prevent significant emotional problems from developing in a large number of teens?