Fact Finder: ABCs of Anxiety
Anxiety can impact the lives of children, teens (and adults!), in the following 6 ways: affect, behaviour, cognition, dependence, excessive and extreme, and functioning.
Fact Finder: Addressing Excessive Reassurance Seeking
Children and teens look to their parents, teachers and trusted adults for information about the world around them, enabling them to reach expected milestones and mature into adulthood. However, for some children and teens, knowledge is insufficient; they also want reassurance and comfort that feared outcomes will not occur. Furthermore, they're dissatisfied with simple reassurances, such as "You've studied enough. You'll do fine," and seem to need unending examples, promises, and guarantees. This is called reassurance seeking.
Fact Finder: Coping with Back to School Anxiety
Anxious feelings are normal and expected in children and teens returning to school, changing schools, or for first-timers starting kindergarten. This transition can be stressful and disruptive for the entire family. In the days leading up to school, your anxious child may cling, cry, have temper tantrums, complain of headaches or stomach pains, withdraw, plead or bargain, and become irritable or angry.
Test Anxiety
The intent of this booklet is to help students and parents better understand test anxiety, and to provide methods to help students cope with test anxiety and ultimately be successful in their courses. Students should read this booklet carefully, consider which aspects of test anxiety apply to them, and then identify coping strategies that may help address the anxiety.
Substance Use and Young People
It is natural for families and caring communities to want to know why young people use substances. They often want to know about potential risks, and question whether the behaviours and attitudes they observe are normal. This guide offers supports to help parents, families and adult members of a young person's community (caregivers, friends, teachers, health practitioners or faith leaders) talk with young people about alcohol and other drugs as they navigate individual life circumstances.
Young People
Mental health matters at every age. Mental health and substance use problems affect children and youth, but the right care and support can help young people build important life skills and thrive as they transition into adulthood.
Young People: Self-injury
Self-injury (also called nonsuicidal self-injury or NSSI) is not uncommon: 15-20% of youth and young adults report self-injury. However, there are a lot of misconceptions and assumptions about self-injury, which can prevent people from getting help they need and working towards recovery. In this issue of Visions, learn more about self-injury, find strategies to help you in your own recovery, see how you can support a loved one, find support and resources, and learn from others who are navigating different parts of their own recovery journeys.
I’m a young person and one of my parents has a mental illness. What can I do?
Someone else’s illness is not your fault. You also can’t control how someone else feels, their illness, or the things they do or say. What you can do is take care of yourself. Learning more about your parent’s illness can make it a bit easier to understand what they experience.
Help your Child Overcome Perfectionism
Perfectionistic children and teenagers often have rigid “black-and-white” thinking. Things are either right or wrong, good or bad, perfect or a failure. Help your child see the gray areas in-between. For example, something can have a flaw, and still be beautiful.
