If your teen has tried Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and still struggles with depression, you may want to ask your health care provider about Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT). Interpersonal Psychotherapy is an evidence-based, time-limited talk therapy that has proven to be effective in the treatment of major depression, eating disorders and mood disorders. What’s more, it…
A three-step plan that might help you survive your teenager’s depression
If you’re thinking you might not survive your teenager’s depression, I’ve got an idea. Three steps that helped me climb out of a pit of despair and hopelessness and get my head and my heart back in the game. I’ve talked to enough moms to know that it’s not unusual to hit rock bottom when…
If your teen is doing things that make you say WTF, read The Teenage Brain
When my son turned 13 and started doing things that made me say WTF more than a few times, a friend recommended I read The Teenage Brain. “Trust me,” she said. “It’ll explain everything.” The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Asolescents and Young Adults is written by Dr. Frances E. Jensen, a…
Build a safety net for your teenager’s mental health
It is not always easy to distinguish teenage moodiness from teenage depression, so why not build a safety net for your teen’s mental health. Look for signs of depression through the lens of your child. While I knew the common signs of depression, I didn’t see them in my own daughter. She didn’t fit the…
How much screen time is too much for our kids?
As parents we tend to look to other parents to tell us how much screen time is too much for tweens and teens. So, lucky for us, The 2019 Common Sense Census on Media Use by Teens and Tweens is out. It’s the ultimate comparison tool. The verdict: kids are spending nearly five hours or…
The best book about parenting kids with mental health challenges
I found Parenting Through the Storm by Ann Douglas after my daughter reached the recovery stage, but I wish I had found it sooner. If you’re unfamiliar with Ann Douglas, get ready to rejoice because this lady has been through the wringer and has lived to tell the tale. She knows of what she speaks!…
Depression recovery is not a solo act–you need an MVP
Who is your MVP right now? Who do you turn to when depression starts winning? Gary Gulman once said of depression recovery, “This is not a solo act.” In a recent New Yorker Interview, he gave his girlfriend Sadé, the coveted title of MVP in his story. Which got me thinking: Who is my MVP?…
Is hardiness the new resilience?
Is hardiness the new resilience? I think it will be come January 2020, when Dr. Steven J. Stein’s new book Hardiness: Making Stress Work for You to Achieve Your Life Goals comes out. I had the good fortune to hear Dr. Stein speak at a recent event at The Globe and Mail (full disclosure: I…
Treating the whole family at the George Hull Centre
The George Hull Centre for Children and Families, in Etobicoke, Ontario, is one of 400 agencies in the province that support children and youth mental health. I was familiar with it as my daughter, through a referral from her school, had briefly done speech therapy at the centre as little kid. As well, a close…
Rethinking our education system on World Mental Health Day
Last spring I wrote a post about re-thinking our education system to prevent suicides on university campuses. It was written in response to the death of a student at the University of Toronto. I could recycle that post now, just months later, following the death of another student in late September in the Bahen Centre…