Substance abuse chances increase during adolescence and teenage.

Abstract

Mental health-related complaints are more prevalent in young individuals who are undergoing adolescence. Majorly complaints are unidentified and underreported due to lack of awareness and fear of being embarrassed. Prolonged living with below-optimum mental health makes adolescents susceptible to anxiousness, fearfulness, depression, emotional, behavioral, and eating disorders, disturbed interpersonal relationships, stress-handling capabilities, and poor quality of life. Adolescents’ mental health harmony needs to be taken care of from childhood by developing their inner capabilities, strengthening interpersonal skills, and rebounding connections with their family, school, and friends. Time-appropriate identification of mental health illness and provision of adequate support surely help adolescent improve their disrupted mental health and deal with the complications maturely.

Introduction

Adolescence is a transitional stage from childhood to adulthood and it is constructed by the strong pillars of physical, cognitive, linguistic, and socio-emotional health. Optimum adolescent evolution seeks sound positive mental health, psychological wellness, an encouraged amount of social and emotional learning, and equipped with the right skills to handle life’s daily inevitable distress.

The prevalence of adolescent ill mental health is high with 1 out of 7 aged between 10-19 years old suffering from mental health-linked complaints but ironically, most of the discomforts experienced are unidentified and underreported.

The mental health status of an adolescent can be determined by their sleeping pattern, activeness level, problem-solving and decision-making promptness, cognitive and emotional communication skills, interpersonal interactions, stress handling, and failure coping strategies.  Adolescents experience medical health problems while dealing with daily routine stressors which surface as symptoms like stomach ache, headache, dizziness, and inability to perform work, study, and take part in recreational activities.

Well-founded mental health helps adolescents to live daily life in a more satisfied and comfortable way and learn to deal with emerging emotions, realize their potential and build positive interactive relationships.

Mental health and circle of life

In early adolescence (10-14 years), mental health is influenced by puberty initiation, physiological and emotional transformations, confusion related to self-image and identity, and highly spiked risk-taking urges. Late adolescence (15-19 years) is driven by family and social expectations, allowable behavior, and pressure to settle down careerwise, get financial freedom, and establish importance in society.

Mental health affecting elements

Stressors in an adolescent’s life include encounters with difficult daily situations, peer and social acceptance, and trying to understand feelings.

Social media affect

Prolonged and regular digital media exposure depending on the type of content exposed to, interaction frequency disrupts mental health, sleep, and ultimately physical activity. Adolescents are affected by social media encounters based on their innate strengths, weaknesses social, cultural, and financial background, and parental upbringing.

During adolescence, brain development goes on its delicate phase including a spike in risk-taking behavior and high proneness towards depressive mood development. Adolescents also usher an increase in sensitivity towards rewards and punishments and this could further be increased due to frequent social media use causing a prominent change in the amygdala, which is crucial for behavior and emotional learning, and the prefrontal cortex which regulates impulsiveness, emotions, and stabilizes social behaviour. Social media usage enhances the opportunities to connect and befriend with wide group of people and affectionate towards real life to reduce loneliness, leading to low self-esteem, dissatisfaction from real life, and an increase in worries, fearfulness, sleep deprivation, and depression.

Neglect pinch

It occurs when the adolescent does not receive the basic need of love and comfort from their parents or caregivers. Neglect associated with domestic violence disturbs the adolescent's psychological makeup and makes them excessively dependent on seeking a caring environment.

Self-Harming tendency

Adolescents surviving in depressive surroundings are more prone to self-injury, erratic mood changes, social withdrawal, anger eruptions, poor academic achievement, and unsatisfied interpersonal relationships.

Substance abuse and smoking indulgence

This develops due to the urgency to feel included in the peer group and socially accepted. Sometimes it is done to overcome stress, as a quick gateway from life’s difficulties, and explore the tendency to try something new and trendy.

Following unhealthy eating and lifestyle habits

Adolescence is burdened with malnutrition either in the form of over or under-consumption of food. This is accompanied by irregular meal timings, high processed food intake, eating while watching digital gadgets, lack of adequate physical activity, and getting appropriate sleep and rest. Altogether it leads to a weak mental, emotional, and physical nature which disintegrates even with a minute distress of daily living and lands up to pessimistic thoughts and purposeless life.

Bully terror

It is a negative behavior of physically hurting, teasing, threatening or spreading rumors about someone. Cyberbullying is a part of bullying where hurtful activity is done through the usage of the internet. It instigates a disturbance in bullied adolescents’ mental health and makes them fearful, helpless, silent, isolated, and anxious.

Harmful Consequences of adolescent’s Poor Mental Health

1. Expressed as simple symptoms such as headache, anxiousness, sleep hindrance, and difficulty in academic learning
2. Eruption of emotional disorders like anxiety, panic attacks, mood swings, social isolation, loneliness, school absenteeism and depression
3. Causes behavioral disorders which are lack of concentration, destructive habits, weight consequences before acting, and difficulty appropriately expressing emotions.
4. Development of eating disorders, mostly getting attracted towards anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa, being overweight or underweight, and changing eating patterns as per emerging emotions
5. Advancement towards psychosis by experiencing hallucinations, delusions, self-harming and suicidal and breaking rules and regulations tendencies
6. Generating risk-taking behaviors like getting involved in substance abuse and health-disrupting emotional and physical pain coping strategies

Why should we pay attention to adolescent mental health?

Adolescents’ poor mental health condition leads to detrimental life-threatening effects but adolescents fail to seek appropriate help due to their poor awareness regarding mental health service availability and fear of being outcasted. Consequences of adolescent mental health illness restrict their chance of having social and financial opportunities fulfilled contented adulthood.

Mental health protective interventions

All the strategies should aim towards improving the adolescent’s ability to regulate their emotions, inculcating appropriate positive stress handling techniques, and developing love and trust-filled supportive relationships. A strong corporative partnership is needed to develop between the adolescent, his family school, and mental health service-providing bodies. This will reduce the stigmatization and taboo related to mental health check-ups and enhance the openness towards the treatments.

Mandatory steps

1. Inquisitively detect and identify mental health-related disturbances to decrease their distress and counselor visits
2. Provide appropriate tools and teach the ways to self-access their mental health condition and report to the healthcare provider as and when required
3. Create widespread awareness regarding mental health problems, their life-threatening effects, and rules to follow during therapy

Interventions need to be individual, family, and community level

Individuals- Therapy should include psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, and emotional and behavioral counseling. Along with these strong supportive feelings should be developed towards family and peer groups and proneness to take their help during crisis occurrence. Detailed knowledge about the ill effects of self-harm, substance abuse, risk-taking habits, poor interpersonal interactions, inability to handle stress, and depression should be provided to the adolescent regularly through different modes of communication.

Families- Unconditioned affectionate, loving, and trustworthy care is required by the family members and caregivers which helps the adolescent to build strong, positive, and stable mental, emotional, and social connections. Training must be provided to the family on understanding the ways to manage mental health development in adolescents.

Communities- 360-degree promotion of mental health awareness should be done at an all-round level. Efforts should be made to stop suicide and substance abuse cases and introduce life skill education programs from an early age. Stringent policies, rules and regulations should be made to nurture adolescent’s mental health, which can be offered through continued psychosocial and counseling support. Norms need to be developed to eliminate the shame associated with adolescent’s mental health conditions.

Conclusion

An adolescent living with good positive mental health and personal well-being-driven life is less vulnerable to stressor-medicated complications. Adolescent’s mistakes and deviated misbehavior surface due to a lack of adequate support from the family, caregivers, school environment, and peer group. Risk factors for adolescent anxiousness may vary from unfiltered non-stop social media exposure bringing discrepancy between the reel and real life to exposure to harsh conditions such as physical or emotional violence, over-controlling parents, experiencing comorbid health complications, facing prolonged failure in academic and personal life, and living in unhealthy environments.

It is of high importance that efforts should be made to maintain an equilibrium in adolescent’s mental health conditions since childhood. All adolescent issues especially mental health-related issues should be addressed attentively, appropriately, and sensitively so that they are encouraged to pass their life’s confusing developmental stage that is adolescence productively. Timely inspection of adolescents’ mental health inconsistency and interventional therapies to reinforce adolescents’ inner capabilities, and coping abilities and training them to manage unavoidable stressors undoubtedly improve their mental health not only in adolescence but adulthood also.

References

1. Social Media and Youth Mental Health. Published March 11, 2023. Accessed February 19, 2024. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf
2. Guidelines on mental health promotive and preventive interventions for adolescents. Published March 11, 2020. Accessed February 19, 2024. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/336864/9789240011854-eng.pdf?sequence=1
3. Adolescent Problem in Psychology: A Review of Adolescent Mental Health Studies. Published March 11, 2019. Accessed February 19, 2024. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339194563_Adolescent_Problem_in_Psychology_A_Review_of_Adolescent_Mental_Health_Studies/link/5e435da1458515072d932f23/download?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIn19

4. Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing Across the Life Course. Published March 11, 2022. Accessed February 19, 2024. https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/Child-and-Adolescent-Mental-Health-and-Psychosocial-Wellbeing-Across-the-Life-Course_Framework-for-Research.pdf
5. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (2021) 30:183–211
6. Journal of Adolescent Health 72 (2023) S3eS6
7. Predictors of mental health in adolescents. Published March 11, 2022. Accessed February 19, 2024. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1703490/FULLTEXT01.pdf

8. Mental health of adolescents - World Health Organization (WHO). Published March 11, 2021. Accessed February 19, 2024. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-mental-health