How to Help Your Teen With Depression and Suicidal Ideation

Teenage depression is a very common state that nearly 75% of teens go through within their high school journey. The key is to deal with it, and limit it to a point where it does not go back. This article will offer tips to help your teen appreciate life and everything it has to give.

Steps

1. Have an open heart-to-heart conversation with your teen, making him or her open up to you.
2. get rid of the FUD factors (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt).
3. Make sure your teen understands that being popular does not equate being liked.
4. Allow them to spread sun-shine wherever they go!
5. Win their hearts, with 10 words or less (an expanded thank you!).
6. Give a strong shoulder and a big ear.
7. Make sure they know you just want them to be happy.
8. Actions speak louder than words.
9. Use the words "I LOVE YOU" lavishly, but only when you mean it.
10. Make sure your teens appreciate diversity.

Tips

• Do not stress on everything and add more fuel to the fire.
• Open your heart, listen, and understand everything your teens have to say.
• Camping trips really help! Pack your bags, and go on a family wild trip.
• If you know someone who is dealing with depression, don't ignore it. Help them out. It will do them better in life and make you feel better about helping people out.
• If your trying to help a person who is born with depression which is very common to babies now, their is nothing you can do but be by their side. Talk about happy things that happened to them or to you. Make them smile:)
• If the depression gets worse and they start to think about suicide, then don't try to act like their own therapist. Get some help from a hotline. Hotline is a group of people who help people out all around the world with problems like these. They do this for a LIVING you don't.

Warnings

• If things go out out of hand, seek professional help.
• Do not shout, as it never works. Teens with depression are waiting to hear from someone who loves them.
• Make sure you see the signs before your teens attempt to take their own lives, for example:
  
  • Were straight "A" students for many years, but no longer interested in their studies
  • Do just about everything without complaining (this should be an abrupt change from prior state)
  • Become very quiet, having very little to say
  • May have a sudden request ("can you stay home tonight") that you're quick to dismiss. Please listen to this! Your teens have reached a last chance to change their mind.
  • Have just experience a recent lost, e.g. parental separation, long time friend moves, death of loved one.
• If you have observed your teens and see any of the above, intervene immediately.

Things You'll Need

• An open and understanding heart
• Patience
• Willingness to be supportive

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Help Your Teen With Depression and Suicidal Ideation. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

How to Manage Your Bipolar Disorder

If you have Bi-polar disorder, or know someone who does, you know how frustrating it is. It doesn't have to be so frustrating if you can accept it and adapt to it.

Steps

1. Get your diagnosis firm and get settled on your meds. This list will take a long time to complete, so there's no hurry. Work through it at your own pace. If you have the disorder and are not on medication, you may wish to start taking medication. There are a lot of medications out there, and they all work a little differently. If you wish, research medications to find out about them, but rely on your treating doctor when it comes to choosing meds. If you get side effects, contact the doctor in a constructive way (not complaining) and work with him/her to manage the meds.
2. Find out about bipolar: this includes not only the medical stuff but read about other people's stories.
3. Get to know your cycles and your episodes. If you are a type II (depression and hypomania), then your cycles may be longer, and episodes shorter and less severe.[[:Template:Goodwin & Jamison Manic Depressive Illness]] If you are a type I (depression and mania or just mania), your episodes may be more severe, longer and more often.[[:Template:Goodwin & Jamison Manic Depressive Illness]]
4. Keep a journal or some type of "log" that can help you figure out just when you might be able to expect to shift. If you keep a journal, look especially for the changes in your moods, activities and thinking/thought processes ((Kraepelin 1921)) It will help you manage the disorder if you realize patterns in your behavior/thinking associated with your ups and downs. Then things might start to make more sense.
5. In your journal, note down for these changes that occur when you are beginning to get ill. Note them down and find those that are reliable. Also record those changes that happen when you're getting really sick. These will become signs for a) starting to get sick; b) when you need a 'rescue'
6. Make a plan to cover all the following:
   
   1. triggers
   2. mood, activity & thinking changes: early and late in the illness
   3. strategies to stop the illness early or stay safe late in the illness
   4. plans to protect work, money, education, relationships and your children, if any.
   5. maintain a pretty strict daily routine for waking, sleeping and eating. This is because your body clock is fragile because of the disorder.
   6. from experience, figure out when your stimulus levels are getting too high and create some strategies for lowering the impact on you.
7. Focus on your life in the mainstream whether you are working, volunteering, parenting or whatever. Don't get caught in the mental illness ghetto! Find a happy medium - not only with medication, but also with life in general. Find friends who won't make you feel worse, and try making your space (room or apartment) calming and peaceful. It should make you feel safe, and if you need to "hide," then it should hide you.
8. For anyone who has the disorder or knows someone with it - it is important that you read up on the medical information out there on it, because it explains so much! If you ever question why they (the bipolar person) do or say or feel something because you can't understand, this actually might answer some of those questions!
9. Eventually it's better if you can accept that you have bipolar disorder and that this is something you have to deal with. However, almost everybody experiments and/or goes off meds - it's our way of testing this disorder and coming to terms with it. It is not fun ... but to know, accept, and love yourself no matter what will make life a little lighter.
10. To those of you close to a bipolar person, the best thing you can do is try to ride their waves as best as you can while getting on with your own life! If they want to be alone, let them be. Treat them like the adult they are. Do not blame the disorder for everything they do. Try to make them comfortable, treat them like you would everyone else, and sometimes it's best to distract them from their minds. If the person with bipolar is behaving in abusive or otherwise intimidating way, treat them as if the bipolar is not there. Ask them to leave, for example. You will do them a favour as they learn from the feedback from your response to them.
11. An online course on living well with bipolar will be available in January 2010 at BeatBipolar.
12. --BeatBipolar 11:28, 8 November 2009 (GMT)--BeatBipolar 11:28, 8 November 2009 (GMT)

Tips

• Tell friends and family you have this disorder. Sometimes it helps you feel a little less "crazy."
• Laugh at yourself, and at situations. You'll eventually see that it's not as bad as you once thought.
• Don't dwell on the past, present, or even possible future situations!
• Find things you like to do that can take your mind off of...your mind! It will also make you feel better about yourself.
• Stick to your doc's advice. Discuss your queries with him/her. Proper compliance is a must for satisfactory management.
• Join or form a support group, if possible.
• Uncomfortable bipolar medication side effects such as weight gain or tiredness are often temporary and should not be a reason to discontinue the use of bipolar medicine.

Warnings

• This article should not be construed as professional medical advice.
• Those with bipolar disorder have a high risk for addiction. Self-medication is not medication at all!
• If your doctor suggests SSRI's for treatment, be aware of the serious danger of manic episodes triggered by their effects on brain chemistry. This is a common problem that may be overlooked by doctors accustomed to treating "ordinary" depression or anxiety.Template:Bipolar and the Art of Roller coaster Riding, Kelly, M TwoTreesMedia.

Related wikiHows

• How to Ease Depression With Relaxation Techniques
• How to Cope on Days When You Feel Like Hanging Your Self
• How to Seek Help for Bipolar Disorder (Manic Depression)
• How to Cry & Let It All Out

Sources and Citations

• http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic4/effexor.htm - Information on Effexor.
• http://www.webmd.com/content/pages/18/103362.htm - Bipolar medications
• https://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/bipolar.cfm - A great Bipolar reference
• bipolar disorder treatment
• http://www.beatbipolar.com/course_about.html Online bipolar course

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Manage Your Bipolar Disorder. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

How to Treat Autism

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are developmental disabilities that cause considerable impairments in social interplay and communication and the existence of atypical behavior and preoccupation. An ASD begins before the age of 3 and lasts a person's lifetime. Those who suffer from ASDs respond differently to stimulus, and have very dissimilar ways of learning. The reasoning and comprehension abilities of people with ASDs can vary from gifted to severely challenged. Autism is included in this group of disorders. This article will provide information to assist you in the treatment of autism.

Steps

1. Seek professional help. There is no medical examination for ASDs. Health care providers rely on behavioral symptoms of a child during routine checkups. There are screening tests that can also be done during these visits. If your child's doctor does not regularly screen your child, ask that he/she do so.
2. Understand that every child with autism is different. Appropriate treatment should meet with individual needs.
3. Be aware that some parents may use regimens not commonly advocated by their child's doctor to assist the symptoms of autism. These treatments are called complementary and alternative treatments. The following is a list of treatments that fit this category and examples of what they may involve:
   
   • Energy therapy - reiki, acupuncture, Therapeutic Touch
   • Alternative medical systems - aromatherapy, homeopathy
   • Manipulative and body-based method - deep pressure, acupressure, hydro massage
   • Mind-body intervention - auditory integration, meditation, dance therapy
   • Biologically based therapy - using herbs, special diet, and vitamins
4. Know that there is no magic elixir that will cure autism. There are medicines that can help in the treatment of autism symptoms. The following is a list of symptoms that can be helped with medication:
   
   • Severe outburst of anger
   • Aggression
   • Elevated energy level
   • Self-injurious behavior
   • Inability to concentrate
   • Depression
   • Seizures
5. Consult with your health care provider to ensure your child is receiving the proper treatments for his/her individual needs.

Video

Michael Davis, MD, pediatrician, talks about autism in children, as well as autism treatments.

Tips

• Some parents feel a change in their child’s diet will improve how the child feels or behaves.
• ASDs can be detected as early as 18 months.
• ASDs include autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder (including atypical autism), and Asperger syndrome. These conditions have similar symptoms, but are dissimilar in terms of when the symptoms begin, their severity, and the exact causes of the symptoms.
• Early detection of developmental delays and beginning intervention services quickly can better outcomes and assist a child in attaining his/her possibility for achievement.
• Always maintain a close and open communication with your child's pediatrician.
• Remember that ASDs cannot usually be cured, and will remain with child for their lifetimes. Also remember that just because the child has an ASD, it makes them no less aware of what is happening, and does not make them physically different in any way. Try to treat them like normal people, help them when they need it, and never let them look at it as a disorder, until they are old enough to undertsand this. Instead, show them it can be as much of an advantage as a disadvantage
• Keep in mind that many brilliant, famous people have Autistic Spectrum Disorders, including Albert Einstien and Thomas Edison.
• It may be beneficial to try to introduce them to acting, and to other Autistic people. Acting will help work on their social skills, and meeting others with similar difficulties may help them to perceive the world in a brighter way, or give them a coping method.
• ASD children often have extremely bad tempers from a young age, so if your child has temper issues, or you are worried your child has an ASD, start teaching them coping methods from a young age.

Warnings

• Children with ASDs may also have epilepsy or mental retardation.
• Some children with ASDs have psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression.
• Some children with ASDs may have attention deficits, sensory concerns, sleep difficulties, and gastrointestinal upset.
• Support neurodiversity. Do not completely treat autism - keep the rare gifts that they have. It is much better to accept an autistic person than to cure them completely.

Related wikiHows

• How to Help a Family Member Who Has Autism or Asperger Syndrome
• How to Handle Your Child's Temper Tantrum
• How to Enhance Learning for an Autistic Child

Sources and Citations

• http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/index.htm
• http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/overview.htm
• http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/faq.htm

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Treat Autism. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

How to Make a Behavior Intervention Plan for an Autistic Child

Autistic children often have difficult behaviors because they lack the ability to communicate their needs and wants in an appropriate way. To eliminate the unwanted behaviour, the child needs to be helped to have their needs and wants met in a constructive way.

Steps

1. Early detection is key to making a behavior intervention plan for a child with autism. The earlier autism is detected, the bigger the difference you can make.
2. Target only one behavior at a time. Different negative behaviors likely have different causes, and thus different solutions, and it is too difficult to address all of these at once.
3. To identify possible reasons for the behavior, keep a log of what happens before the behavior, the behavior itself, and what happens after (For example: At 4:30, Joey came into the kitchen and grabbed two cookies. When I told him he could not have them, he began to throw a tantrum. When he calmed down, I gave him a cookie).
4. After keeping this log for several days to a week, try to identify the cause of the behavior. In the above example, Joey's tantrums are the result of a desired item (cookie) being taken away after he tried to access them inappropriately. Brainstorm possible reasons: perhaps Joey is very hungry at 4:30, and wants to express that he needs something to eat.
5. Provide a way for the child to get their need met in an appropriate way. Depending on the skills of the child, he could be taught to ask for a snack (I want a snack please). For a non-verbal child, provide pictures of snacks the child likes, and teach him to exchange the picture for a snack when he is hungry.
6. If you have correctly identified the cause of the problem behavior and provided a solution that works for the child, the problem behavior should decrease.
7. Remember, positive strategies help more than negative ones.
8. You must maintain the trust of the child if you want results.
9. If the problem behavior does not decrease, go back to making a log of the behavior, and look for different possible causes and/or solutions.

Tips

• Remember that behavior communicates something - "I'm upset", "I'm scared", "I need your attention", "I'm bored" , etc. What the autistic child is communicating may or may not be appropriate to the situation, but figuring out what the message could be can help you find possible solutions.
• Choose one very specific behavior that you want to change, e.g. throwing food at meals, not "She gets mad and throws everything all the time".
• Determine what happens before the behavior that might be causing it, for instance, does the child with autism finish eating more quickly that everyone else? Is there some way you can eliminate or change that thing to eliminate the behavior?

Warnings

• Be aware that children with autism can be affected by things you might not even notice, for instance you always eat off of certain plates and you changed them, someone is sitting in a different place, you ate before bath time rather than after, etc.

Related wikiHows

• How to Get Your Kids to Eat Food That They Don't Like
• How to Deal With Being a Stutterer in School
• How to Make an Oral Rehydration Salts Drink (ORS)
• How to React if Your Friend's Baby Has Down Syndrome

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Make a Behavior Intervention Plan for an Autistic Child. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

How to Parent a Child With Autism

After careful evaluation, your child has been diagnosed as someone with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Now what? How do you live with this and how do you help your child have the best life he/she can? Autism has many associated essential features. The first is an extreme isolation and inability to relate to people and significant difficulties in communication. A typical characteristic of Autism children is there extreme lack of responsive to adults. A child who has this disorder is aware of people, but considers them no differently from the way he or she considers the desk, bookshelf or filing cabinet.

Steps

1. Learn and know that children on spectrum are normal but they may require different supports that Neuro Typical (NT) children.
2. Make sure that your diagnosis is accurate! If your child was diagnosed by a pediatrician, follow up with a doctor that specializes in ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorders) and have them do an evaluation to determine your child's placement on the spectrum. It is likely that they will also determine if your child has secondary diagnosis, (such as ADD/ADHD {Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder}, Apraxia, SI {Sensory Intergration Disorder}, etc.) Many children on spectrum have secondary disorders and they require support for them as well as autism.
3. Check for Fragile X Syndrome. If your child is male, have him and the male parent tested for Fragile X. In some cases, males diagnosed with ASD are also children born to a parent with Fragile X.
4. Construct a plan for support for your child based on the areas of delay/deficit. If your child is of age to attend school, have your local district assess them to determine what services are beneficial to your child. There are a vast number of therapies that will benefit your child and each therapy is different. Much of this will be trial and error. Do not expect your child to benefit from every single therapy out there or even be in every therapy. Keep in mind that this is a SPECTRUM disorder and while the diagnosis is autism, there are different degrees and areas of delay and advancement. No two persons on spectrum are the same and no two persons respond to therapies in the same manner. Give any thing you try with your child a chance to work or not based on your desire for development for your child.
5. Learn all that you can about your child's present level of development.
6. Learn all you can about diets, medications and alternative therapies available. Again, YOUR child and your beliefs should play a role in what you do or do not try with your child. Understand there is no current cure for AS disorders. At the same time, there are a large number of persons on spectrum who have shown positive improvement from diet and medicinal intervention. When contemplating if you want to consider giving your child medication...you may want to ask yourself, 'if my child had asthma, would I give them medication?' If you answered yes, then why would you not medicate them if it would limit the adverse impact that autism may pose on their development. No one is saying that medication will do this for your child, but if it can in anyway improve their quality of life, you may want to give it consideration.
7. Get plugged into organizations that support families living with ASD. You are not alone and they will be your best source of information on programs, funding and research. This is also a great place to vent about things that only other persons living with a family member with ASD would understand. YOU are NOT alone, so don't isolate yourself.
8. Locate an organization that can provide Parent Education. Understanding what autism is (...and isn't) and how it impacts your child takes time. Having professional intervention help you understand the what's, how's and why's of your child go a long way to helping your child grow.
9. Become a student of autism from every angle. You will benefit your child and family as a whole if you understand the laws about educational rights, insurance (what your medical benefits are and if you have little or no insurance...you can seek state insurance {medicaid}, what your local school districts can and cannot offer for your child to be mainstreamed or if they will be required to pay for your child to attend a school that specializes in working with children with Developmental Delays/Disorders.
10. Take appropriate safety measures, if needed. If your child tends to "escape"/"run" (this is also known as elopement) and has little or no safety awareness, you may need to outfit your home with an alarm system. In some cases, your child may benefit from special devices to restrain them in cars and even in some cases in their own bed. In the case of a child who wanders from their bed and could endanger themselves or others, you may need to acquire a self-contained bed. In many cases, they are covered by insurance, but are expensive and often refused by the carrier as an unnecessary cost. The alternative is to not sleep at night for fear that your child may leave their bed and either get into something that could harm them or even leave the house. For those who have this apparatus, it is a necessity.
11. Love your child. You are the model of what others will think, and believe about your child. If you treat your child as you would any other child...others will too. It is perfectly fine to explain to someone that your child has autism, but never apologize for it and never make excuses.
12. Work with your child's medical professionals, social workers, physical therapists, speech therapists and teachers to help your child develop in a positive manner. Remember it's a team effort when it comes to dealing with your child's development.

Video

Tips

• Surround yourself and your child with professionals who are trained in childhood development. Not everyone who has a degree is qualified to care for a child with autism.
• Trust your judgment! If you feel that something will benefit your child, do all that you can for your child to get it...whatever that might be.
• Listen to other parents who have passed the milestones you are at...there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
• You are your child's best advocate, but you are only as good as what you know, so learn all you can about everything related to autism.
• Apply what works for you and your family and reject what doesn't. There are no general rules for how to treat children on spectrum, so don't expect to find a concrete approach to your child.

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Parent a Child With Autism. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.