Teenagers & Mental Health

World Mental Health Day is celebrated every year on 10 October, with the goal of creating mental health awareness, particularly among the youth. All of us can make our contributions to ensure that young people struggling with mental health problems can live happily with dignity.

- C. Joseph

Today, teenagers and adolescents are experiencing many physical, emotional, cultural, and social shocks. They live in a polluted environment. They are passing through a crucial stage of development with regard to their psychological, social, and emotional well-being. These have a profound effect on their mental health.

The suddenness and the rapid pace with which these changes take place to generate a number of problems and te special needs, which they find difficult to understand on their own. Most of them become intensely concerned about their physical appearance and are highly self-conscious; anything that makes them different from others upsets them. They need proper care and attention from parents, teachers and their peers.

Teenage is a transitional period in which many changes occur in their bodies, thinking process, and their social life. There is also a silent cry in the teenagers for an ‘independent identity’ to grow as unique individuals. It is a time of exploration, exuberance and youthful search characterized by a number of cognitive, emotional, physical and social changes. These very ‘changes’ become a real problem for them and to their parents and in a larger context they become their real challenges, as well.