Sometimes life feels overwhelming. Work pressure, school demands, family responsibilities, and constant digital noise can make it feel like the weight of the world is sitting on your chest. When that happens, even small tasks feel exhausting. That’s exactly why self-care isn’t optional, it’s essential.
Feeling nervous, restless, or constantly on edge? You’re not alone. Anxiety affects more than 40 million adults in the United States, and many people in St. Louis quietly struggle every day. The good news? Anxiety is highly treatable with the right support and strategies.
Parents often ask how they can support their child’s emotional and mental well-being in healthy, lasting ways. Positive mental health in children isn’t built overnight, it grows through daily habits, connection, and safe environments.
A growing number of parents across the U.S. report that their teen’s mental health has been negatively affected since the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent surveys show increased concerns around anxiety, depression, self-harm behaviors, and suicidal thoughts among teenagers.
Understanding Mental Health at the Brain Level Something To Think About: “When you put a kid who had experienced adversity in an MRI machine, you could see measurable changes to the brain structures.”— Dr. Nadine Burke Harris
Having feelings isn’t a sign of weakness — they mean we’re human, says producer and activist Nikki Webber Allen. Even after being diagnosed with anxiety and depression, Webber Allen felt too ashamed to tell anybody, keeping her condition a secret until a family tragedy revealed how others close to her were also suffering.
Something to Think About “Twenty years of medical research has shown that childhood adversity literally gets under our skin, changing people in ways that can endure in the body for decades.”— Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, California Surgeon General
“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.” — Margaret Mead That quote has stayed with me for a long time, and it feels especially true when I think about the work being done in schools around mental health. The people doing that work are teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents who care deeply. And caring, it turns out, changes things. This week I want to share something that’s been on my mind, along with a few resources worth knowing about. A Statistic That Shouldn’t Be Ignored According to the CDC, 18% of high school students reported seriously thinking about attempting suicide in the past year. Let that number sit for a moment. Nearly 1 in 5 high schoolers. Not struggling quietly with stress or occasional sadness, seriously thinking about ending their lives. This is not a fringe issue. It’s not something happening in someone else’s school or someone else’s family. It is happening in every school, in every zip code, across every income level. And most of the time, the adults around these students have no idea. That’s not a failure of caring. It’s a failure of awareness and access, which is exactly why conversations like this one matter. When teenagers are struggling with thoughts of suicide, hopelessness, or self-harm, the most important thing is connection to consistent, professional support. Teen and adolescent counseling provides a confidential space where young people can say what they cannot say at home or at school, and that outlet can genuinely save lives. What Schools Are Starting to Get Right For years, schools have operated under an unspoken assumption: emotional wellness is the family’s job; academic achievement is ours. That’s changing, slowly, but meaningfully. The Distinguished School of Mental Health & Wellness (DSMHW) is a national non-profit headquartered right here in St. Louis that is doing some of the most intentional school-based mental health work in the country. Their model is a 12-month intensive training program that works with schools on: Anxiety. one of the leading barriers to learning and attendance Depression which often looks like disengagement, not sadness Trauma including the kind that comes from home environments, not just single events Perfectionism a growing issue, particularly among high-achieving students Challenging student behaviors which are almost always symptoms, not the root problem Teacher self-care because burned-out educators cannot pour into students Mindfulness as a daily, embedded practice, not a one-time workshop Schools that complete the program are nationally certified and recognized as a “Distinguished School.” More information is available at dsmhw.org. This kind of systemic investment matters because individual therapy alone cannot reach every student who needs support. Schools that embed mental health awareness into their culture create the conditions where students are more likely to ask for help, and more likely to get it early. Why Anxiety and Depression in Students Often Goes Unnoticed Here’s something I see regularly in my work: parents who are shocked when they find out their child has been struggling for months, sometimes longer. It’s not that these parents weren’t paying attention. It’s that anxiety and depression in young people often don’t look the way adults expect them to. Anxiety in students might look like: Perfectionism and fear of making mistakes Frequent stomach aches or headaches before school Avoidance of social situations or new experiences Irritability and short fuse (not tearfulness) Difficulty sleeping the night before tests or big events Depression in students might look like: Withdrawal from friends and activities they used to enjoy Declining grades, not from laziness, but from inability to concentrate Sleeping more, eating differently, low energy Saying things like “I don’t care” or “what’s the point” A general flatness that parents sometimes chalk up to “being a teenager” When these signs are present and persistent, they deserve more than a wait-and-see approach. Anxiety counseling and depression counseling offer evidence-based approaches including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based strategies that work especially well with young people when started early. The Role of Trauma in the Classroom One thing DSMHW’s training program gets right is the explicit inclusion of trauma in their curriculum. Trauma-informed education isn’t a buzzword, it’s a fundamental shift in how teachers and administrators interpret student behavior. A child who is consistently disruptive is often a child who is dysregulated. A student who refuses to turn in work is often a student who is overwhelmed. A teenager who lashes out at teachers is often a teenager who has learned that adults aren’t safe. None of this excuses the behavior. But understanding its source changes the response, from punishment to curiosity, from discipline to support. For students carrying significant trauma, classroom-level support has limits. Trauma and PTSD counseling with a trained clinician particularly approaches like EMDR, which is specifically designed to process traumatic memory, can reach what even the most caring teacher cannot. Teacher Wellbeing Is Student Wellbeing This point doesn’t get enough attention: teachers cannot give what they don’t have. The burnout rate in education is staggering. Teachers absorb enormous amounts of stress, grief, secondary trauma, and emotional labor, and most school systems provide little structured support for it. DSMHW’s inclusion of teacher self-care in their training model is one of the things that sets it apart. You cannot build a mentally healthy school environment on top of a burned-out staff. It simply doesn’t hold. The same principle applies at home. Parents who are running on empty, who are managing their own unprocessed anxiety or depression or grief, have less capacity to support their children through difficult moments. That’s not judgment, it’s just the reality of how emotional resources work. Individual counseling for parents isn’t a luxury. For many of the families we work with, a parent getting the right support turns out to be one of the most impactful things that happens for their child. Self-Care as a Daily Practice , Not a Weekend Activity The Tiny Buddha article “45 Simple Self-Care Practices For A Healthy Mind, Body & Soul” is worth bookmarking, not because self-care is […]
Kids are play-deprived nowadays,” says Katherine Reynolds Lewis, a journalist, parent, parent-educator and the author of one of those two new books, The Good News About Bad Behavior. And by “play” she means play without screens or adults keeping watch.
Raising children and teens is one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences for parents. It can also be very challenging, frustrating, and anxiety provoking.This webinar and discussion will provide a great deal of information and hands-on strategies to help parents.
