Mental Health

Buzz | Children’s Mental Health

This issue of the Buzz brings you multiple resources in English and Spanish that you can share with the families you serve. First is the latest information on our children’s mental health, recommendations for treating symptoms of trauma, and guidance on where to get help, supports and services, and the school’s role in addressing mental health issues in students. The second half focuses on the upcoming holiday season and the issue of sensory processing disorders in children, as well as the most common food allergies, their symptoms and treatment, and how to prepare for eating out and dining in.

Reducing Suicide Risk With Safety Plans

September is Suicide Awareness Month. When children in distress express suicidal thoughts or feelings, therapists often work with them —and their parents— to create what is called a safety plan. A safety plan is a document that spells out a series of things the child agrees to do, if they feel overwhelmed, to keep from harming themselves. Parents agree to things they will do to make their child’s environment safer.

This collection of articles from the Child Mind Institute explains how safety planning can help deter teen suicides, which are often impulsive, by steering kids away from harming themselves until the urge passes. With teenage depression and anxiety on the rise, it’s important for all of us to be proactive when children are in distress.

To see the individual articles in the collection and connect with them in English or Spanish, come here.

Parenting Foster Kids with Challenging Behaviors

Useful to: Parent Centers and other organizations addressing the needs and concerns of foster, adoptive, and kinship families.   Very often, foster children have come into care specifically because they have experienced abuse or neglect. Those experiences and other kinds of trauma that may have occurred in their home, including being removed from their birth […]

Facts and Stats about Bipolar Disorder

(2022) | Useful to Parent Centers for sharing with families, schools, and other community organizations involved with children, youth, or adults with bipolar disorder   This article in Medical News Today begins by stating: “Bipolar disorder is a common but often misunderstood mental health condition. The misrepresentation of bipolar disorder and other psychiatric conditions in […]

How to Talk to Kids About Sex and Consent

(Available in English and Spanish) | Useful to Parent Centers, other community groups, and families of adolescent children with and without disabilities   When it comes to sex and our children (and ourselves), it’s important to have boundaries and hold to them. This article from the Child Mind Institute will help parents and other involved […]