Confronting Stress, Anxiety, and Depression

Last January, ParentWiser invited Katie Hurley, LCSW, to talk about stress, anxiety, and depression. She described how parents can learn to identify these issues and how to help children and teens manage and decrease levels of these conditions.

At the beginning of her speech, Hurley quickly mentioned a dramatic increase in the depression rate among teenagers. Then, she shared how parents can differentiate stress and anxiety because, in youth, the symptoms look similar.

The main difference between stress and anxiety is that stress normally goes away, but anxiety does not.

Stress

• Usually has an identifiable trigger

• People normally react with stress to something

• It is something that can be named

• People can see it happening, having a peak and coming down

Anxiety

• Has a series of triggers

• Like a constant, a group of waves keeps going on and on

• Does not necessarily spike high

• Can be more of low-grade anxiety but always there

They have similar symptoms: Psychosomatic complaints; Sleep disturbance; Changes in eating habits; Intrusive thoughts; Irritability; Restlessness; Lack of focus; Muscle-tension; Fatigue; Excessive worry, fears; Difficulty separating

Depression

How do parents identify depression in their children?

These are some of the most common symptoms:

• Psychosomatic complaints: the body can react first while kids might not understand that their emotions are affecting them.

• Sleep disturbance: excessive sleep, insomnia.

• Changes in eating habits.

• Irritability, increased anger, low frustration tolerance, conflict.

• Low self-esteem, feeling hopeless, suicidal thoughts: parents should always take this seriously 100% of the time. With depression, whether it is diagnosed or not, there’s always a risk of suicidal ideation.

• Cognitive impairments (memory, focus, concentration)

• Negative thought cycle, pessimism

• Feelings of worthlessness, shame, or guilt

• Loss of interest

• Feelings of sadness, excessive tears, feeling helpless

How to improve mental health? Stress reduction. Try some emotion regulation tools to practice adaptive coping skills that help kids learn to tolerate and productively work through negative emotions. It also helps them understand how others feel.

The first step to building emotion regulation and distress tolerance is understanding shifts in moods. To understand their own feelings, kids need to be able to label them. Parents can use a mood meter by assigning colors to moods or using a phone app/paper for tweens and teens. They can record moods throughout the day and track mood changes. Parents can also keep a trigger tracker to help identify exactly what happened. Jot down some notes like symptoms of moods, time of the day, sleep, food intake, exercise, water intake, and other specific triggers. This can help parents notice some patterns and know where to begin when getting help for kids.

To check Katie Hurley’s full-length lecture or know more about her, please visit: https://www.parentwiser.org/.

Katie Hurley, LCSW, is a child and adolescent psychotherapist, parenting educator, public speaker, and writer. She is the founder of “Girls Can!” empowerment groups for girls between ages 5-11. Hurley is the author of the award-winning No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, among many other titles.