Stress Awareness Month is celebrated to raise awareness of stress in teenagers and help them develop coping skills. The message is simple, which is what you think about can affect your body. Stress Awareness Month is an excellent opportunity for adults to begin a dialog about their mental health, stress, coping skills, and how they’re taking care of themselves with the adolescents they love. It is a perfect time to enroll your teen in an adolescent mental health program if they are struggling with mental health.
At Fort Behavioral Health, we provide a high-quality adolescent mental health program designed to support teens struggling with mental health disorders by teaching them coping skills for adolescents. Contact us today online or at 844.332.1807 to learn more about our offerings or enroll your teen in a mental health program.
How Stress Affects Adolescents and How They Cope
Stress can mean different things to different people. Therefore, the best way to talk about stress is as an umbrella term for a wide range of feelings and thoughts that we all feel in response to various circumstances, such as fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, depression, shame, and guilt. Stress is both physical and psychological because the body responds to stimuli by releasing hormones into the bloodstream, such as cortisol. This can throw your metabolism into overdrive and create a cycle of reactivity so that even small things can escalate quickly.
There are different kinds and levels of stress, ranging from mild to severe. While a particular experience may be uncomfortable or cause distress in one person, another person may be able to deal with it quite differently. If someone has experienced one or more stressful events, such as a divorce, homelessness, loss of a loved one, or loss of a job, they might develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While PTSD isn’t necessarily associated with being born under specific conditions, many factors contribute.
Adolescent stress can also become a problem when the adolescent seems unable to cope with the situation. Feeling overwhelmed comes naturally to most of us, but it can be quite scary for a child. So getting help from a therapist can make coping much more manageable.
Teaching Coping Skills for Adolescents
Acute or chronic stress are not issues specific to adolescence. It can affect people of any age and have devastating effects on individuals and organizations alike. Therefore, it is essential to increase awareness of the high impact stress can have on the health and wellbeing of adolescents.
Helping adolescents build coping skills for stress to more independently deal with stress is the goal of an adolescent mental health program. Adolescents often feel that they have less ability than adults to deal with difficult situations, so it can be beneficial for them and others if we can help them learn how to cope better when encountering stressful situations.
A teen mental health program can improve these abilities and benefit adolescents in many ways, such as:
- Teaching them how to deal with stressful situations productively
- Providing coping strategies which they can practice
- Demonstrating that they are not alone in their experience
- Empowering them to make responsible decisions
- Showing them how to reduce their stress levels
- Offering a safe place to process difficult emotions
- Providing a network of support
- Creating healthy habits
- Sharing objective feedback
- Providing a safe space to speak freely
Learn More About Coping Skills for Adolescents at Fort Behavioral Health
At Fort Behavioral Health, we have extensive experience supporting teens and their loved ones in building healthy coping skills to deal with stress. We offer a variety of programs, including group and individual therapy in the greater Fort Worth, TX, region.
To learn more about our adolescent mental health program, reach out to Fort Behavioral Health online or at 844.332.1807.
