Interventions For Poor Mental Health – Youth Mental Health 2023

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer, your happiness expert. Kids today are suffering more than they ever have before, and we run the risk of setting a generation of young people into adult life in the worst shape that has ever existed. That’s the facts. Last week, I shared with you some of the alarming studies about teen and youth well-being, and in particular, how poorly young women are doing. So, I thought as a follow-up to that video, I need to provide some practical guidance as my bit of service to this topic. In this video, we’re going to be looking at some of the main symptoms of the most common types of mental health issues and then some ways that we can intervene in the lives of people we love, whether they’re youth or adults or frankly at any age in life. The advice I’m going to give is helpful and indeed potentially curative for really poor mental well-being, so stay tuned, that’s what this video is for.

Public speakers and best-selling authors, stay tuned to hear Paul and Jackson teach the practical science behind happiness and success. There are essentially three of the most common, run-of-the-mill mental health disorders: it’s anxiety, depression, and increasingly, a specific kind of anxiety called social phobias or social anxiety disorder. My focus on this video is about youth and young adults. They could be anybody in your life – friends, family, at any age, but workmates whatever. Look for these warning signs of poor mental well-being, and I’m going to list them very briefly, but these are in fact very good indicators, especially if you see these kinds of symptoms over the course of many weeks. If I have a bad day and I’m feeling down, that’s not depression. But if I’ve had very poor coping for multiple weeks, that is very likely depression. So, look for these things.

When it comes to depression, we are really talking about this persistent sense of low efficacy. That I don’t have power in my own life and that leads to persistent sadness or anxiety, a sense of emptiness. We often feel guilty or worthless or hopeless that we don’t have a place in the world that matters, and that we don’t have any investing of value or reason to be living. We often have tremendous fatigue or lack of energy, and that may express itself in a couple of different ways in sleep. Very poor sleep or tons of sleep but in either case just having low energy. Struggling with concentration, poor memory, distorted thinking, lousy decision making, and of course, thoughts of suicide. Now, those are the main symptoms of depression, and if you see them in people you love, we need to intervene. I’ll talk about that in a minute, but first, let’s look at the symptoms for the other most common kind of mental suffering, and that’s anxiety.

Anxiety is feeling restless. You’re all wound up, you’re on edge all the time, you’re overthinking everything, worrying about what’s going to happen with your future, with any endeavors you’re engaged in. There’s often lots of irritability. Something sets you off in a moment. If there’s a ton of muscle tension, that’s a clear sign of anxiety, and one of the main ones is poor sleep. The inability to fall asleep or stay asleep. So often it has hours go by where you cannot fall asleep and then you wake up mid-midnight, sort of three, four a.m, 2:30 a.m, that kind of thing, and can’t get back to sleep because the brain just turns on and it’s going full on. All of these things are very clear signs if they’re going on over weeks, of anxiety and its disabling impact if it goes on for time.

Then one that we don’t talk about as much, but I think is profoundly more relevant as we talk specifically about youth and young adult mental poor well-being, and that’s social anxiety disorder. The symptoms for that are a lot the same as anxiety disorder, but they’re focused on our social relationships. So, if people feel very anxious just at the thought of being around others, where they really are afraid of struggling to talk to people. Where they’re feeling that they may offend people or that they may suffer rejection or embarrassment or humiliation, all those things are really clear signs. If they’re worried about being judged, if they feel anxious days or even weeks ahead of some important social event, and if they avoid being in places where they’re going to have to see people of their own age. Obviously, when people chronically struggle to make and keep friends, these are pretty clear signs of a social anxiety disorder.

Now, all of these things are treatable, and I’m going to talk about what I believe are some of the best kinds of treatment. Then obviously, if it’s severe enough, we go see a doctor. They have very few tools at their disposal. They might recommend counseling, which is a great idea, and they’ll probably push the medication, which we could debate whether or not it’s always a good thing, but if people are in a real crisis, obviously, we’re going to go and take that opportunity because there may be some beneficial impacts. But more broadly speaking, there are things that we simply know are good for us, and they will make a difference. If people are at all able to have enough efficacy to take some actions, that taking action alone is often hopeful and provides some symptomatic relief. These things when done regularly can be hugely beneficial over time, not only to deal with mental poor well-being, but to increase people to high levels of happiness.

First of all, exercise. We are just animals that have evolved to be busy in our bodies, and that means getting our heart rate up with intense exercise, even really fast walking can do it, for at least four times a week, more than 20 minutes per occasion. Every day would be ideal that we get our heart rates up in some intense exercise, lasting at least 20 to 40 minutes. Sleep is so important. The research being done on this topic that never before have we been clear about it, that all of our mental health poor outcomes are associated with poor sleep. We need typically around eight hours of sleep as an adult and at least eight to ten hours as a youth and a teen. If we’re not getting them, we’re more subject to memory loss, immune deficiencies, all kinds of mental health disorders. We know sleep is absolutely of critical importance.

So, there may be problems associated with sleep, but the worst kind of thing is when we simply don’t have a structure and routine in life that facilitates good sleep. So if we’re working with young people, we need as parents, guardians to be the type of people who create some structure in lives so that they’re not bringing their phones to bed with them, they’re getting enough time in bed so that we give them a chance to process the anxiety and fears they have in their life through the healing impact of sleep. If there’s someone in your life that you really care about, do a hobby with them that creates this bond and connection with them so that they have a place where they feel connected, have interest, and ideally then opens up some space for real sincere communication.

Because that’s one of the worst things about youth and teen mental health, is that there’s so much anxiety about sharing what they’re experiencing. There’s so much shame associated with it, so we need to create comfortable, safe places for kids to talk about this stuff. Obviously, you’ve heard me, Paul Krismer, talk about in previous weeks: limit social media. It is the doom scrolling, where we’re comparing our lives to fictional people who have these picture-perfect lives, filtered and all that kind of BS. That isn’t real, but it’s a social comparison, is so profoundly negatively impacting for young people.

Kids can learn all kinds of meditation techniques. The simplest ones are a few simple breathing exercises, but we could also do yoga or other types of contemplative exercises like Tai Chi. Then also formal meditation training, many of which, including importantly, mindfulness-based stress reduction, has zero kind of religious or spiritual connotations to it. It’s just good mind training. Keeping a journal, some kind of diaries, often very, very good. And again, I’m going to finish with where I started on this. If the symptoms are really quite severe and you’re quite worried about this young person, they need to see a doctor. They are relatively few great interventions through the medical system, but when we need it most, we want those interventions.

I hope this is helpful. It’s a bit dark and heavy, not where I usually like to go, but I just feel like there’s a real crisis with young people today, and all these things that I’ve described in a youth context are true for us at any age in life. And I hope this little bit of video content is helpful to you. If you like the content, click the like button, share it with your friends and family, and we’ll see you next week. Thanks so much for watching.