by Aaron Reznik
Board of Advisors, R.O.S.E.S., Inc.
One in five children between the ages of 13 and 18 have or will have a serious mental illness, and roughly 11% of teens have a mood disorder. This may be due to the high standards and pressures set in our society, by friends and family, or by academic and career goals and expectations. Regardless, the truth is that our mental well-being generally has more impact on our overall well-being than anything else, especially during the young and influential years of a teenager’s life. Therefore, the need for teenagers to maintain positive and consistent mental health serves as an essential factor in determining their happiness, productivity, success, and overall quality of life.
From due dates to dating, social life to social media, and future expectations to current ones, teenagers have a lot going on inside their heads. It’s hard to pick a time in one’s life where more impactful actions and choices are made than during their teenage years. Creating meaningful friendships, deciding on college, balancing school work with extracurriculars with social life, and maintaining and growing the image, lifestyle, and overall life goals one wants are only a few of the serious issues constantly floating around in the heads of our country’s youngest and brightest minds. It is absolutely, positively, tough to be a teenager.
Mental health can be defined as “a person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being”, while mental distress is considered to be “a range of symptoms and experiences of a person's internal life that are commonly held to be troubling, confusing or out of the ordinary”. The goal for teenagers is to improve or maintain their mental health by doing everything in their power to decrease mental distress. This means one must let go of their desire to always be doing, thinking, planning, or preparing, and simply focus more on just living.
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