What parents need to know about their children's mental health

A person's complete health and well-being depend on their mental health. A person's quality of life is negatively impacted when they are depressed and stressed out. Today's pupils are particularly vulnerable to the negative consequences of mental illness. Every person's childhood is a significant turning point in their lives. Everything that occurs at that time has a direct bearing on how they perform as adults. The way a kid interacts with important persons in their life and the setting they grow up in have a big impact on how they develop socially, emotionally, and cognitively.

The common thing noticed amongst most families in plenty of countries is that when they complain about not feeling good mentally or they’re feeling suicidal, it’s neglected and usually blamed on gadgets or their living ways. In a way, a person’s lifestyle can be one of the issues but there are plenty of root causes ranging from childhood trauma to big difficulties being faced at that position in their life. One must start looking at mental health issues as any other physical condition, for example, if one breaks their knee they don’t sit home and pray for it to get better instead they choose to go to a certified doctor who can diagnose it, then why isn’t it same for issues or conditions happening in your mind?

Every person has their own ways of dealing with things, and some people aren’t sure of how they’re feeling or wonder how they should turn it towards the better. A therapist comes into play in these scenarios, they dig up what’s the main cause and provide you with the outlook that you’ve been missing. This helps immensely as one can than start working on what they did not realise themselves but just with outside help. Seeking outside help doesn’t mean that you are incapable of helping yourself, it means that you’re matured enough to understand when to seek help to stride towards the betterment of yourself.

Parents expect their children to be open to them talking about everything that’s happening with them in some households, while there are others where it is considered a taboo to talk about a lot of things. Irrespective of the household that children are in, it is psychogically a normal thing for children to sometimes be uncomfortable to talk about certain things or perhaps difficulties they’re facing. Seeking outside help doesn’t destroy the reputation of a person or doesn’t mean one’s “mad”, as I’ve heard many people think and say that that’s when a person goes to therapy. This is a basic necessity in today’s world where there are so many changes happening with each day passing.

On the contrary, sometimes there are families of parents who try to send their child to get some mental health care and the said child is in denial, it must also be understood that this is a very normal thing. For people to accept that they need help comes a tough way, and to immediately expect a child to understand that they need help is difficult. It can be pursued gently and with time so that they reach a position that they themselves accept that they need certain help because that is how they grow with therapy, forced therapy is also not a solution to such situations as the proverb goes “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”, in this situation, you can send one to the care they need but they aren’t going to take it unless they believe they need it.

When a child doesn’t grow with a completely stable mind-set and doesn’t address their issues at a young age, it is going to impact them for the rest of their lives, and it gets tougher with passing time for them to treat it. There are changes in the child’s daily life that can be clear indicators for needing psychological help; they can be simple things like changes in eating or sleeping habits, extreme feelings of sadness or anxiety, disruptive or destructive behaviour, social isolation and many such changes. In some scenarios, one doesn’t recognize that they need help until and unless they themselves decide to seek therapy and this is normal as they will understand how it can significantly improve their daily life and make them feel better.

One might question as to why such a young person has mental health issues, children may be exposed to a variety of problems, such as peer pressure, family dissolution, and more serious bad life events including bullying, violent crime, inadequate care, and dysfunctional households. Which over-time, is extremely likely to result in issues with emotional, physical, and mental health. While some children just have a slight difference in behaviour during such times, other can go to extremes and be completely different people by their actions or words.

In the households, where therapy isn’t spoken of, especially in countries like India, where more than 80% of the people need mental care but do not receive it. Children can try to sit down with their parents and explain to them that the need of therapy is like just any other doctor and how the imbalances of certain hormones or excessive thoughts is the cause and it’s not because one is going rogue. Parents also have to understand and realise that the child needing therapy doesn’t make them bad parents; instead it actually means that they’re caring enough to offer and cater to their child’s psychological needs. When there is an option to seek help at the child’s school/college it makes it even better, the counsellor will be able to understand what’s going with them at their educational institution easily as well.

Coming to the conclusion, therapy for children is crucial, it is a chance for the child to learn to manage their emotions and comprehend the relationship between their feelings and actions in order to have more control over them. It can result in the increase of the child’s self-esteem, social competency, well-being and even confidence. Finally, it will decrease the anxiety and depression that the child has been facing which will reduce the pressure they feel on themselves.