On the Couch with Gail Saltz, M.D. | A Mental Health Blog at iVillage.com
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35 children have been left at hospitals by parents in the last month under Nebraska's safe haven law. The law was made for parents of infants who were too overwhelmed to care for their baby, or young mothers who really did not want a baby and did not know where to turn. But what has been unearthed is that many parents who feel completely overwhelmed in caring for and supporting a child--even a teen--are leaving their kids at the hospitals.
An important fact is that 30 of these kids had a mental health diagnosis. This is the vast majority of the kids abandoned, even by some parents driving across state lines to leave their child. What it reminds us is that the services available for mental health care in general and particularly low-fee treatments are truly insufficient.
Part of the problem is that parents often don't know that their child has a mental health issue. Then, if they do know, the ability to find a psychiatrist that can be afforded, or the support network to help them manage are seriously lacking. Hence, it is not shocking that some parents who are feeling hopelessly overwhelmed are looking for ANY way out.
The plan is to repeal the law and make it applicable to infants only, but this will not solve the problem which has been uncovered. Many children suffer from mental health issues and many are very treatable. We need to work as a nation to expand both the information available and the services accessible to parents many of whom will have kids with a mental health issue of some sort.
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An important fact is that 30 of these kids had a mental health diagnosis. This is the vast majority of the kids abandoned, even by some parents driving across state lines to leave their child. What it reminds us is that the services available for mental health care in general and particularly low-fee treatments are truly insufficient.
Part of the problem is that parents often don't know that their child has a mental health issue. Then, if they do know, the ability to find a psychiatrist that can be afforded, or the support network to help them manage are seriously lacking. Hence, it is not shocking that some parents who are feeling hopelessly overwhelmed are looking for ANY way out.
The plan is to repeal the law and make it applicable to infants only, but this will not solve the problem which has been uncovered. Many children suffer from mental health issues and many are very treatable. We need to work as a nation to expand both the information available and the services accessible to parents many of whom will have kids with a mental health issue of some sort.
Related Content:
A recent survey found that 90 percent of Americans are having trouble sleeping as a result of worrying about economic issues. People are worrying during the day too, but nothing quite stokes anxiety like lying down to relax with no distractions at all; just blackness and quiet looming before you. This is when obsessive worries can really take over, making sleep impossible. Unfortunately, the less you sleep the more worried and irritable you will feel the next day. It can become a worsening vicious cycle.
Watch the segment from TODAY
To break that cycle, it is important to form your plan during the day. How will you deal with your money, your job and your home? For example, you can stop going out to lunch to save money, polish up that resume, and make an appointment with a financial advisor to discuss how you can better manage your money and your home. At night, when worry starts to knock, remind yourself that you already have done whatever you deemed doable and that there is nothing to be gained by mulling it over now.
Employing methods to relax your body, such as muscle relaxation and deep abdominal breathing, can be helpful. Visualize a relaxing spot to help calm your mind. Tell yourself that it is only worth worrying about something if you can actually do something about it, and then do what you need to do to cease the worry.
Situational sleep problems like this are best handled with these techniques rather than jumping to medication. However, if the problem is going on for weeks and impairing your functioning during the day, you should see a doctor to evaluate if medication may be helpful.
Related Content:
To break that cycle, it is important to form your plan during the day. How will you deal with your money, your job and your home? For example, you can stop going out to lunch to save money, polish up that resume, and make an appointment with a financial advisor to discuss how you can better manage your money and your home. At night, when worry starts to knock, remind yourself that you already have done whatever you deemed doable and that there is nothing to be gained by mulling it over now.
Employing methods to relax your body, such as muscle relaxation and deep abdominal breathing, can be helpful. Visualize a relaxing spot to help calm your mind. Tell yourself that it is only worth worrying about something if you can actually do something about it, and then do what you need to do to cease the worry.
Situational sleep problems like this are best handled with these techniques rather than jumping to medication. However, if the problem is going on for weeks and impairing your functioning during the day, you should see a doctor to evaluate if medication may be helpful.
Related Content:
An important new study was published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. It found that children with anxiety disorders improved substantially on a combination of Zoloft (a serotonin reuptake inhibitor that treats depression and anxiety) combined with short term psychotherapy. It was the combination of both medication and psychotherapy that was most helpful, but it was also important to find that medication alone or psychotherapy alone was also helpful to kids with anxiety, just not as much.
20% of children have an anxiety disorder. It may be generalized anxiety where kids worry and have enough fears to affect their function, or separation anxiety where they have such fear about being apart from a parent they can't sleep out or have trouble going to school or being apart at all. Another is social phobia where there is such self consciousness about being with other people that the child becomes isolated from making new friends.
When these disorders are left alone many children go on to develop depression or even substance abuse as a result. It is important to seek treatment for your child and the great news is that treatment really works and will be bring relief to the entire family.
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20% of children have an anxiety disorder. It may be generalized anxiety where kids worry and have enough fears to affect their function, or separation anxiety where they have such fear about being apart from a parent they can't sleep out or have trouble going to school or being apart at all. Another is social phobia where there is such self consciousness about being with other people that the child becomes isolated from making new friends.
When these disorders are left alone many children go on to develop depression or even substance abuse as a result. It is important to seek treatment for your child and the great news is that treatment really works and will be bring relief to the entire family.
Related Content:
Attention Deficit Disorder is a collection of symptoms usually thought about in terms of children who are struggling in school, children who seem impulsive, easily distracted and fidgety. Increasingly, children are getting a diagnosis, and then one of their parents becomes shocked to realize that their child's symptoms are the same as his or her own from childhood. Instead of being diagnosed with ADD and benefiting from treatment, this earlier generation was told they were difficult kids, losers, dumb or simply bad. Sadly, many of them/you grew up believing that all of that was true, and it shattered your self-esteem and became a self-fulfilling prophecy as you struggled with underachieving at work and having difficulty in relationships.
But the diagnosis in children has liberated some adults to go back to find out if what they thought was simply being a difficult person was really ADD.
Watch the segment from TODAY
Symptoms may look similar to your child's symptoms, or be very different.
For more information on ADD or ADHD go to www.DRHallowell.com
Get more tips and information on Today Show on iVillage
But the diagnosis in children has liberated some adults to go back to find out if what they thought was simply being a difficult person was really ADD.
- Overall, the problem is the sensation that thoughts are hard to hold onto, that you are often distracted by new thoughts before you got to complete the last one.
- There is both a distractibility that makes it hard to follow a sequential line of thinking or task completion, and also possibly a hyper-focusing on something that especially catches your eye, to the exclusion of anything else.
- Feeling a rush to impulsively act on whatever comes to mind (in combination with a low tolerance for frustration) means you are a person who may say or do things that don't seem terribly appropriate at the moment.
- Overall organization is difficult and so nothing gets completed, just lots of bits and pieces.
- A mental and physical restlessness pervades, making it hard to relax without feeling anxious or tied down.
For more information on ADD or ADHD go to www.DRHallowell.com
Get more tips and information on Today Show on iVillage
