Help Me, Help You: How to Help Your Struggling Teen

We may not know the exact numbers, but with our own eyes, we've all seen the recent rise in mental health problems among young adults, caused by a Molotov cocktail of pandemic isolation, unrelenting social media pressures (directly on kids themselves, as well as their parents), and deepening societal divisions.

It might not be your child; it might be your niece, your grandson, or your best friend’s daughter who, despite seeming okay on the surface, just made a suicide attempt and is being hospitalized—but you've likely noticed it. However, if it is your teen who is stuck, despondent, refusing to go to school, overeating, quietly vomiting up every meal, secretly watching TikTok videos about self-harm, or showing noticeable signs of substance use, it can be overwhelming as a parent knowing where to begin to get your child help. This is where the research and work by Anthony Pantaleno, Ph.D., and Barbara Edell Fisher, Ph.D. can help.

Source: Anthony Pantaleno and Barbara Edell Fisher / Used with Permission

Pantaleno and Fisher are veteran psychologists with decades of experience helping teens and parents work through the psychological stressors of adolescence: both as school psychologists, as well in their own private practices. In addition, Pantaleno was also a collaborator in developing a national peer support program called Natural Helpers, which trains peer leaders to work with their school’s mental health team to assist struggling peers in finding professional psychological support.

In their work, Pantaleno and Fisher provide a road map for parents to navigate the mental health landscape. Their research and work address these issues, as well as those related to differences in therapeutic orientation, medication options, and what to do if your teen refuses to get the help that you clearly see they need. This is what we might call the Jerry Maguire problem—i.e., "Help me, help you!"

Regarding this so-called Jerry Maguire problem, Fisher says, that parents need to hear their kids’ concerns:
What are their reservations about therapy?
What makes them feel uncomfortable about taking this step?
Validate that these feelings are normal when starting something new.
Make the connection between going to therapy and learning to manage challenging social situations.

Furthermore, when parents include themselves in the therapy process, this can be helpful as well. These words do not help a teen: “You need help.” It is better to ask if they’d be willing to go to family therapy, "We can work on the issues affecting us as a team.” The message that teens and young adults too often hear is: “We have to fix what’s wrong with you.” Being scapegoated in this way is usually the biggest reason for their resistance to seeking help. As such, offering to go to family therapy as an alternative could be a way to dissolve their resistance to treatment. But, if your child prefers individual therapy, meeting with their therapist at the beginning of treatment and discussing the best ways to approach them can help get treatment off on the right foot.

Pantaleno and Fisher also recommend mindfulness techniques to help teens understand that, “rather than focusing on changing the [problematic] thoughts themselves, you can change the way you relate to the thoughts and stop believing they are all true.” Apropos of this, Pantaleno and Fisher were both trained in the Koru Mindfulness program, now called the Mindfulness Institute for Emerging Adults. This was the first mindfulness curriculum specifically designed for emerging adults, and together Pantaleno and Fisher helped co-found Koru Mindfulness Long Island in their community (with a few other colleagues), bringing this curriculum to many groups of young adults over the past five years.

If parents are lucky enough to convince their teens to start therapy, their teens will form a strong bond with therapists who get to know their unique histories, as well as their quirks and sensitivities. However, when these teens graduate from high school and go on to college, often in a different state, interstate restrictions (which were briefly relaxed during the pandemic) now prevent them from having telehealth sessions with their therapists at home.

Pantaleno and Fisher conclude that: "Archaic state laws which prohibit telehealth across state lines for psychologists in our home state of New York and other places must be updated for these times… The attorney general cannot sound the alarm about a mental health crisis on the one hand, and then restrict telehealth access on the other hand to the millions of underserved individuals who make up those at the highest risk levels."