The Power of Group Therapy for Teens Struggling with Mental Health

Adolescence is a period of significant change and growth, both physically and emotionally. Many teenagers face mental health challenges during this critical phase, often feeling isolated and unsure of where to turn for support. While individual therapy is a valuable option, group therapy has emerged as a particularly effective approach for teens grappling with mental health issues. 

Why group therapy for teens can be a powerful tool for mental well-being

1. Peer Support: Breaking the Isolation

Teenagers often experience a sense of isolation in their struggles, believing that they are alone in their pain. Group therapy creates a supportive environment where adolescents can connect with peers who are facing similar challenges. Sharing their experiences and emotions with others who can relate helps diminish feelings of isolation and offers a sense of belonging. Knowing that they are not alone can be immensely comforting and validating for teens.

2. Normalization: Erasing the Stigma

Adolescents frequently believe that their mental health difficulties are abnormal or unique to them, which can intensify their shame and self-blame. In a group therapy setting, they quickly realize that their struggles are shared by others. The normalization of their experiences reduces self-stigma and promotes self-acceptance. By understanding that their feelings and thoughts are not uncommon, teenagers can gain a broader perspective and develop greater compassion for themselves.

3. Social Skills Development: Learning and Growing Together

The teenage years are a critical period for social and emotional development. Group therapy offers a safe space for teens to practice and develop essential social skills. Engaging with peers in therapy allows adolescents to improve communication, active listening, empathy, and conflict resolution skills. Through interactions within the group, they receive valuable feedback, learn from others’ experiences, and explore different ways of relating to others. These skills extend beyond therapy, contributing to their overall social and emotional growth.

4. Feedback and Perspective: Broadening Horizons

In group therapy, teenagers benefit from receiving feedback and perspectives from both their peers and the therapist. They gain insights into their own behavior and beliefs by hearing how others perceive them. This feedback challenges assumptions, enhances self-awareness, and provides alternative viewpoints that may not have been considered. Exposure to diverse perspectives can serve as powerful catalysts for personal growth and change.

5. Role Modeling and Inspiration: Harnessing the Power of Peers

Within a group therapy setting, teens have the opportunity to witness the progress and successes of their peers. Seeing others overcome challenges and make positive changes can inspire hope and motivate individuals to work towards their own goals. Role modeling is particularly impactful during adolescence, as young people tend to value and learn from the experiences of their peers.

6. Support Beyond Therapy: Building Lasting Connections

Group therapy facilitates the formation of connections and friendships among participants. These relationships extend beyond therapy sessions, offering ongoing support and encouragement. Adolescents find solace in knowing they have a network of peers they can turn to during difficult times, even outside of therapy. These lasting connections become an invaluable source of support on their mental health journey.

Group therapy holds immense potential for teenagers struggling with mental health challenges. By providing peer support, normalizing experiences, fostering social skill development, offering feedback and perspective, inspiring through role modeling, and facilitating lasting connections, group therapy becomes a powerful tool for adolescent well-being. While individual therapy remains a valuable option, the unique benefits of group therapy make it an effective and holistic approach to supporting teenagers on their path to mental wellness.

How ROWI Can Help

Engaging in mental health treatment is another way to support your teen. ROWI Teen & Parent Wellness Centers can help you and your teenager with professional mental health support.  Each of our clients receives a treatment plan that will support them in meeting their goals. Programs are individualized in order to meet each client and family where they are at in the process. To get started with ROWI Teen & Parent Wellness Centers, contact us or simply call our Admissions Team at 805-356-3477 and one of our helpful coordinators will assist you in completing an application, scheduling an assessment, verifying your insurance, and get you, your family, and your teen started on your journey to mental wellness.

Mental Health Issues do not just go away and are often dangerously ignored.  Parents do not always recognize the symptoms of mental health problems or may not be aware of how severe the problem is.  Others may feel the behaviors will go away with time. Unfortunately, mental health and wellness issues must be addressed to avoid greater problems.  When a teen is exhibiting these kinds of behaviors, parents should seek professional help.

• Eating Disorders – Treatment is necessary as soon as any eating disorders are discovered;
• Family History – If there is a history of mental illness in the family, promptly act upon concerning behaviors;
• Cutting – If a teen is hurting him or herself, even if it is a one-time thing, it is important to seek help as cutting or self-harm may be a way of dealing with a serious mental health issue;
• School Avoidance – When teens do not go to school on a regular basis, this is often a symptom of a broader problem;
• Out of Control Behavior – If a teen’s behavior is causing chronic trouble in school or is seriously disrupting family life, it is important to get help.  Disruptive, explosive or dangerous behavior can be generated by anxiety, trauma and frustration from an undiagnosed learning problem, among other things; and
• Emotional Issues Over Time – if a teen seems unusually anxious or sad or irritable for a long period of time and it’s interfering with his or her ability to do things that are appropriate for kids his or her age, then it is time to get help.  A teen who is seriously anxious or depressed is not just suffering, they are missing out on important parts of their teenage year.

Like other medical problems, mental issues can be diagnosed and treated.  However, you do need a team of professionals to help you. ROWI Teen and Parent Wellness Centers can help you and your teen get through these tough times.  ROWI offers a comprehensive outpatient program where we provide our clients with evidence-based individual and group therapy as well as holistic treatments including mindfulness training, meditation, yoga, surf, equine, art and improvisational therapies, among others.  We also have in-house schools and accredited teachers at each of our locations to allow our teens to catch-up in school and get back on track.

There is help and it is close by.  ROWI accepts most insurance policies. Let us answer any questions you have.

Do Not Ignore the Importance of Social Skills as We Raise Our Kids

By Dr. Candice Feinberg & Greg Feinberg

Depending on your age, you did not have nearly the schedule or technological advances that our kids have. We did not have powerful, hand-held computers. We were not on club soccer or baseball teams playing year-round. Our schools were not nearly as sophisticated as they are now.  Many of us had after school jobs, taking us away from study time or extra-curricular activities. Far less was invested into us than our kids today.  Why did we end up doing ok? When do we confuse investing in our child’s development with actually getting in the way? One of the answers is that we were not distracted from learning critical social skills. We have to make sure we are not ignoring the importance of these skills as well.

Jennifer Senior, the author of All Joy and No Fun, explains that “Today parents pour more capital – both emotional and literal – into their children than ever before, and their spending longer, more concentrated hours with their children than they did when the workday ended at five o’clock and the vast majority of women still stayed home,” writes Senior.

On the other hand, children today are not expected to contribute economically.

In her recently published book, Be the Parent Please: Strategies for Solving the REAL Parenting Problems, author Naomi Schaefer Riley points out that “The twentieth century marked the first time in human history that having children didn’t increase your economic standing,” Children today have become the receptacles of parents hopes and dreams.

“Perhaps without noticing, our parenting strategies evolved to be more geared toward ensuring that our children are never bored, uncomfortable, or at the slightest disadvantage when compared with their peers. By other measures, though, we are failing to prepare them for life as independent adults,” writes Riley.

What has occurred is a dramatic increase in attentional disorders, or what Dimitri A. Christakis of Seattle Children’s Hospital calls an “epidemic” of ADHD. He notes that an increase of one standard deviation in the number of hours of television watched at age one “is associated with a 28 percent increase in the probability of having attentional problems at age 7.”

Even in the case of educational software designed to increase readiness for school or enhance learning, there are unintended negative consequences.  “While it may seem as though our children can gain more academic skills through educational software, it is also possible that these touchscreen and button-pushing activities are inhibiting them socially and intellectually,” writes Riley. Cell phones can also be misinterpreted by parents as necessary safety nets for their children.

What all of this investment in and concern for our kids is really doing is allowing them to become deficient in key social skills.  People are not talking anymore. Today when you arrive at a meeting early, people are on their smartphones communicating with others or otherwise entertaining themselves. As parents, we are providing a grave disservice as the majority of healthy life in the adult world revolves around solid social skills.

As a lawyer and entrepreneur for over 30 years, I have succeeded more on my social skills than my substantive knowledge. Our world is still fundamentally the same. People want to work with, spend time and/or love others they trust. We interact with other people every day. We have taken great strides to ensure our kids are academically smart but are we spending any time making sure they have the social skills to even interact with others at a higher level?

You can go to the best law, medical, or B-School in the country. But if you do not have the skills to communicate and work with other people, you will not be the best lawyer, doctor or businessperson. It is critical that we remember the social skills our kids need to learn are as or more important than the bookwork.  We certainly had time to learn both.

At ROWI Teen and Parent Wellness, we have instituted “Wireless Wednesdays.” We ask our parents to lead by example and turn their cell phones off. The whole family follows, and they share an evening without smartphones. They can actually talk to each other.

Let’s minimize the technological distractions and community service hours to make sure our kids literally stop and smell the roses. Find the time to cultivate face-to-face communication and more social interactions. We ended up ok. So will our kids.

Candice Till-Feinberg, Ph.D. is the CEO & Chief Clinical Director for ROWI Teen and Parent Wellness center in Thousand Oaks, California.  Greg Feinberg is the President of ROWI.  ROWI focuses on helping teens and parents live happy and healthy lives together and offers outpatient services and counseling through its world-class team. Contact us for more information or call at (805) 356-3477.

Taking Back Your Power As A Parent:

It felt like yesterday that your teen listened to you. They may have even liked you [shock]. It was only a week ago that you asked them how their day was and they actually told you. Now…crickets.

When it comes to power as a parent, it’s not just cleaning rooms and keeping curfew that we are talking about, it’s parents wanting and needing to be heard when their teens are putting themselves in life threatening situations. Parents want their power back, and I don’t blame them. Taking power back starts with how you define power. When we look at a healthy family system there is an element of control and respect that parents have in the sense that they are creating the rules and structure of the household. However, we also think that bringing your power back as a parent comes from re-attaching and re-connecting to your teen.

It is an incredibly difficult transition for parents when their teens go from really looking up to them and wanting to spend time and connect with them to the sudden changes that middle and high school bring. Now, their peers are the people they want to spend time with and the predominant influence in their lives. While this is natural, and for the most part healthy, it is a weight on the family system. It has been my experience as a family therapist that parents most often lose their power when it becomes more about the power and less about the relationship.

Traditional parenting philosophies are really supported by the idea that because you are a parent you innately deserve and are entitled to respect and power. While I agree with that sentiment, what I find most often with the teens that I am working with is that they do not typically feel respected or trusted by their parents and they feel like they then have a right to be disrespectful back.

Oftentimes, the key to a parent getting their power back is to form good and meaningful connections with their teens by reevaluating family roles and communication styles and reconnecting in an authentic way. Really ask yourself how you communicate with your kid – is it working? I spend nearly all of my day communicating with teens and understand how challenging it can be. Even in my own work as an adolescent therapist, I notice myself pseudo-parenting to a degree, but I am forced to remind myself that teens just want to be listened to, and most often their desire is to be listened to by their parents.

It seems so counterintuitive that our love and protective nature for our teens could be the biggest downfall in our communication but it often is. This love and protection lead us to wanting to solve our kids’ problems for them, or judge their problems, or fix their problems. It’s harder to listen to what someone needs when you are in problem-solving mode.It also sends them the message that we don’t trust that they are capable of doing it themselves. Then we find that kids no longer want to go to their parents when they are hurting and in trouble, and this is dangerous. Now they are going to their friends, and their friends are the ones with all the power. “How do I get my parenting power back?” is the same as asking, “How can I get my kid to talk to me?” The most powerful tool we have as parents is the connection we have to our children. Teens want structure and they want boundaries, and they want their parents to be in control. It’s just how we as parents go about exerting that power that can create positive or negative family power dynamics.

Contact us for more information at (805) 356-3477.

By Brittany Cohen

Addiction in Adolescents

Researchers estimate that between 50-90% of teens in treatment for substance-use disorders also have diagnosable mental disorders.

Most physicians, psychiatrists and scientists now believe that addiction is a brain disease, and addiction progresses much faster in adolescents for three basic reasons:

1. The teens developing brain and other vital organs are extremely vulnerable to the toxic effects of alcohol and drugs;
2. Teens start using drugs at an early age, often beginning in middle school or even elementary school; and
3. Teens often combine multiple drugs, which dramatically increases their risk of brain damage and drug addiction.

At ROWI, we offer the highest quality mental health and addiction treatment for teens and their families. Learn more about the services we offer and the diagnoses we treat. Or contact us to learn how we can help your family.

While screens are stealing our teens’ attention, they’re also taking away their joy.  Social media and technology use are now directly linked to the increase in depression for teens. The statistics for teen depression and suicide began rising in 2012. At the very same time, teens access to smartphones also rose. Jean Twenge, Psychology Professor at U.C.S.D. and author of iGen explains that this is no coincidence.

Twenge cites two data sets to reveal that time spent online is linked to mental health issues. A study of more than 500,000 adolescents nationwide found that teens who spent three or more hours on their phones or other electronic devices were 34% more likely to suffer from at least one depressive episode. This includes feeling hopeless to seriously considering suicide. That number jumped to 48 percent for teens online five or more hours a day.

A 15-year-old high school sophomore with her whole life ahead of her recently admitted to making a suicide plan. She confessed her greatest distress came from Instagram. For many teens, social media pages become an extension of their self-worth. A popularity report card that is always being graded, without ever passing. With a brain that isn’t fully developed, teens do not have the capacity to self-regulate and unplug. It is literally affecting the wiring of their brains.  Adults are also affected by the same re-wiring. That is why it is so important for parents to put healthy guidelines, practices and modeling in place to help their teens.

While your kids most likely will be resistant, call a family meeting about your social media use. Make sure the grown-ups are a part of this discussion about screen time and balance. Many teens are equally discouraged that their parents are distracted by their phones. True connection and feeling understood is the greatest weapon against depression. As parents you can prevent and help heal your child’s hopelessness by whole-heartedly engaging with them.

Let’s look at ways to limit screen time. This should not be delivered as a punishment or consequence for the teen, but as a practice of finding balance for the whole family.

• Set up tech time as a break after other work, chores or outside activities take place. So that tech time doesn’t come first, and it doesn’t happen automatically.
• Make up a technology contract. Include everyone, even parents.  This will look different for every family.  But put it in writing.  You can include specific times of day and the length of time.
• Put restriction controls on your teen’s devices.

A couple of monitoring sites are K9 Web Protection or Family Cyber Alert.

• Have consequences in place for violations of the technology rules. This will be in the contract ahead of time so that there are no surprises.  Have everyone sign the contract.
• Collect phones at bedtime so there isn’t a temptation.

The climate of our fast-paced world has led to more convenient ways of communicating and yet in the midst of all these advancements we are a society that is forgetting how to truly talk with each other. This generation is growing up less prepared to handle real world interactions with future instructors, bosses and relationships. But you can shift that tide in your own home. Pay attention to and limit how often everyone is retreating to their own spaces. Create time to be together, technology free.  You may find this opens up your teen to share more of what’s going on in their world. If it’s too difficult to handle the impact of technology addiction with your teen ROWI is here to help. Contact us using our online form or call (805) 356-3477.

Up next in our series on teen depression we are going to look at how a parent’s use of technology can impact their teen. Your attention is more important in their lives than you realize.