THE PARENT TRAP
The attention to the kids makes sense. The CDC's 2021 data showed a quarter of teen girls had made a suicide plan. Social media has been blamed for the rise in mood disorders, as have sleep deprivation, spikes in loneliness, and academic pressure.
One of the key ways we can bolster teens' mental health and buffer the vulnerable is healthy, attuned relationships with their parents. The trouble is, that can be problematic too.
According to two national surveys completed as the pandemic wound down in December 2022, about 20% of mothers and 15% of fathers reported anxiety, compared with 18% of teens. About 15% of teens reported depression, alongside 16% of mothers and 10% of fathers. In total, about one-third of teens had a parent suffering from reported anxiety or depression.
"Our data suggest that we would be just as right to sound the alarm about the state of parents' mental health as about teens' mental health," writes Richard Weissbourd, director of the Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, one of the authors of Caring for the Caregivers: The Critical Link Between Parent and Teen Mental Health.
Depressed and anxious adults who are parents of teens are faced with the double whammy of trying to manage themselves while simultaneously supporting teens. For adolescents, worrying about a parent or caregiver can be destabilizing when life seems rocky enough. Weissbourd's data show that depressed teens are about five times as likely as nondepressed teens to have a depressed parent, and that anxious teens are about three times as likely as nonanxious teens to have an anxious parent. About 40% of those surveyed were at least "somewhat" worried about a parent's mental health.
This story is from the September 04, 2023 edition of Time.
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This story is from the September 04, 2023 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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