2021-22

Mentally Endangered Teens

Research shows that many 10-19-year-olds experience a mental disorder

Malaya Bermodes, Writer|April 19, 2022

Art Credit: Katie Becker

Types of Mental Health Challenges

Eating disorders are often caused because of society and the pressure of having the “perfect” body. Social media sites like Instagram and Tiktok can make people insecure about their appearance because of the “perfect” bodies and faces that are shown. Most teenagers have social media. According to Mayo Clinic “17-year-olds found that 45% are online almost constantly and 97% use a social media platform, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat.” Eating disorders are a very serious disorder and should be treated with care. If you know somebody with an eating disorder please don’t say, “Just eat/Just don’t eat”. That is not helpful at all and is more damaging to them than helpful.

Depression and Anxiety can be formed by the same thing, comparing yourself to people that seem prettier or smarter than you can take a heavy toll on a person’s mentality. Self doubt and negative thoughts can be a very harmful thing to someone’s mental health. School and personal life can also have a negative impact on a person’s mentality. School has been estimated to be 10 to 15 percent of teens have depression because of school. This is because of the stress of having good grades along with the big amount of people and bullying actions. Personal life like home or relationships (platonic or romantic) struggles can be a big reason for depression as well. Anxiety has a lot of different columns, there is social anxiety or GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder). They are all different from each other. Social anxiety is very common in teens, they may have trouble with talking to people or have bad anxiety in crowded places.

Personality disorders such as BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) , Bipolar disorder, and OCD (Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder) can be formed by trauma at a young age or getting it passed down in genes.

Borderline Personality Disorder. The most commonly known personality disorder is BPD. BPD is usually called the most difficult and hard to treat because of the symptoms.

Bipolar disorder has been portrated in movies and TV shows throughout the years. Most of these incidents show that people with this disorder are dangerous and should be feared. That is far from the truth, yes bipolar disorder can cause someone to have major mood swings and impolsive thoughts but that does not mean they should be treated as such.

OCD is classified as a personality disorder but does not have a big impact on the personality like other personality disorders, this disorder is more of a mind playing disorder. This disorder makes it were a person has to do a certain things in a specific order, amount of times, color, ect. People with this disorder have to do things like switching a lightswitch a certain amount of times or they can’t step on a certain color. There are multiple types of this disorder but this is the most common.

How do I help?

Some good ways to help people with these or different disorders is to do some research to understand their disorder more. Avoid saying things like “Why are you doing that? It looks weird” or “It’s not that big of a deal.” These phrases are definitely not helpful; being patient and helping them with what they are comfortable with is helpful. To deeply help them it depends on what the disorder is. If the disorder has symptoms like outbursts or mood swings try and be patient with them; don’t get mad if they blow up at you or are very moody sometimes. They can’t control it and they don’t want to be that way. If it comes to something like anxiety, try and soothe the person in stressful situations. For example, if a friend has social anxiety, try not to go into places with a lot of people and definitely don’t randomly ditch them. Anybody can have mental health struggles so don’t say they are “faking it” just because they aren’t showng every sign possible.