Editor’s Note: Community Comment is a periodic column in The Mount Airy News featuring commentary from community leaders in Mount Airy and Surry County. This particular column is part of a monthly series on drug abuse prevention and treatment.
Stress is a response to external challenges, such as school assignments due, or being asked to make difficult decisions. Sometimes stress can be positive and encouraging but it can also ruin one’s well-being.
Why does stress, anxiety, and mental health issues in teens seem to be getting worse? According to Psy.com, the most common sources of stress was school (83%), getting into college (69%), and concerns for their families (65%).
Psy.com (Smith, 2022) also reported that many teens are overeating or have an unhealthy diet (26%), lying awake at night (35%), or skipping meals (23%); these were all due to stress. Teens reported to have an average stress level of 5.8 out of 10 during school, and a stress level of 4.6 out of 10 during summer.
The American Psychological Association (APA) surveys people across the United States about stress sources, intensity, and how people mentally and physically respond to it. “Teenagers are looked at as little kids, when they feel that they have had to grow up so fast. I think teenagers struggle so much because they are not heard and are judged when they express themselves in any way,” says Erin Sjodtedt.
As a high school student and a teenager, I agree with Ms. Siodtedt, when she states that teenagers do not feel heard in school. We feel as if we’re in kindergarten because the teachers are looking at us as kids, but we’ve had to grow up tremendously fast because of pressure to be excellent in everything we do in school and life.
According to “Stress and stress management: Pre-teens and teenagers 2022,” signs of too much stress in teens could be tense muscles, headaches, teeth-grinding, racing heart, sweaty palms, trouble sleeping, low energy, fatigue, exhaustion, feeling irritable, feeling overwhelmed, loss of motivation, and difficulty concentrating. Stress can damage your child’s mental and physical health long term, as well as lead to anxiety disorders and depression. Stress can look and feel like anxiety, which is the worry that something bad is going to happen due to lack of coping skills. Anxiety can happen even if there isn’t a challenging situation or event.
Once you understand the difference between stress and anxiety, it can help you work out what your child is feeling and how to help. So many teenagers are struggling with such large amounts of stress, therefore they end up coping with stress in an easy, but negative way. They start vaping, drinking alcohol, and then end up trying different drugs. More and more teens are choosing the easy route because it seems too hard to cope with the stress or they don’t know how.
When we perceive something as difficult, scary, or painful, our bodies go into fight or flight mode. Positive techniques for coping with stress in teens according to (Aacap, 2019) are: exercise, a healthy diet, adequate rest, a structured routine, avoiding alcohol, tobacco products, and illicit substances, engaging in relaxation techniques, developing assertiveness training skills, rehearsing and practice responding to situations that cause stress, learning effective coping skills, decreasing negative self-talk, not trying to obtain perfection, giving yourself a break from your stressors, and surrounding yourself with positive influences. Though these techniques will not cure stress, they will take a tremendous amount of weight off a teen’s shoulders.
Autumn Goad is a student intern at Surry County Office of Substance Abuse Recovery. She is a senior at North Surry High School and would like to attend college to become a lawyer. If you or someone you know need help dealing with adolescent stress, or other topics related to substance use prevention, please contact Charlotte Reeves, Community Outreach Coordinator at Surry County Office of Substance Abuse Recovery at reevesc@co.surry.nc.us, or at 336.366.9064. Check out their website at surrycountycares.com to learn more about the program.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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