stress
Teenagers experience all kinds of stressors during adolescence, including stress about:
Although severe and long-lasting stress can make some people more likely to develop a mental illness, regular everyday stress does not cause mental illness.
In fact, not all stress is actually bad. Stress can help us realize our values, motivate us, and make us work harder. After all – if something doesn’t matter to us, we may not be motivated to work hard and accomplish our goals. Unfortunately, if stress starts to get overwhelming, it can also prevent us from getting things done and make us feel terrible.
Learning how to cope with smaller stressors teaches us how to deal with larger stressors in the future. Although we sometimes assume that people just know how to cope – it’s actually something we learn. People can be taught how to cope better. Finding Balance (one of our programs) helps teens learn coping skills and how to use them.
- school
- friends
- classmates
- family conflicts
- personal identity
- health problems
- the future
- financial issues
Although severe and long-lasting stress can make some people more likely to develop a mental illness, regular everyday stress does not cause mental illness.
In fact, not all stress is actually bad. Stress can help us realize our values, motivate us, and make us work harder. After all – if something doesn’t matter to us, we may not be motivated to work hard and accomplish our goals. Unfortunately, if stress starts to get overwhelming, it can also prevent us from getting things done and make us feel terrible.
Learning how to cope with smaller stressors teaches us how to deal with larger stressors in the future. Although we sometimes assume that people just know how to cope – it’s actually something we learn. People can be taught how to cope better. Finding Balance (one of our programs) helps teens learn coping skills and how to use them.
anxiety (General Anxiety disorder [Gad]) |
depression |
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Anxiety is a disruption in how your brain controls the signals it uses to identify danger and initiate action to help you avoid it. If you have anxiety, this signalling mechanism does not work as it should and you experience the danger signal when there is no danger.
Someone with GAD worries excessively about many different things and is not able to control his or her worry. The worrying and anxiety causes serious emotional distress, and causes problems at school, at work, and in relationships. These feelings of anxiety usually also have physical components, including headaches, aches and pains, nausea, shaking and sweating. Feeling anxious in response to danger or in new situations is a perfectly normal response. It’s called the fight-or-flight response and helps us survive in dangerous situations. But these typical feelings are different from GAD. A person with GAD constantly feels tense and on edge, even when there is no danger present. There is no one specific cause for GAD – multiple genetic and environmental causes play a role and it is not caused by the usual stresses of everyday life. Some medical conditions (e.g., thyroid disease) can mimic an Anxiety Disorder, and some medications can also cause anxiety-like symptoms. |
Depression is different than feeling sad or down. It is a medical condition affecting the way mood is controlled by the brain. Someone with Depression can’t just “snap out of it.” Depression affects the way he or she thinks, feels and acts. It becomes a negative lens through which he or she sees and experiences the world.
When Depression happens, it often lasts for many months and then sometimes gets better. This is called an episode of Depression. Most people who get Depression will experience many episodes during their lifetime. Depression is often called Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Sometimes a negative event (such as the loss of a loved one, or severe and prolonged stress) will trigger an episode of Depression but often episodes will occur spontaneously. Depression is not caused by the usual stresses of life. Depression is often accompanied by feelings of anxiety and causes significant problems with family, friends, work or school. All information taken from: Teen Mental Health
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