Contemporary Issue Faced by Teenagers: Anxiety Disorders

Description of the Issue and Associated External Stressors

Anxiety mix is one of the most prevalent mental health challenges that the adolescents of today are battling with. This is a category of diseases, which incorporates generalized anxiety tangle (GAD), social phobia, panic disorders, and unequivocal phobias (Creswell et al., 2021). In teenagers, anxiety presents itself as an unnecessary and uncontrollable concern, ending up being easily agitated, lethargy, inability to concentrate, irritability, and complaints of head and stomach pains.

The following are the main external stressors that lead to the increased rate of anxiety disorders among teenagers. Mainly, a serious degree of academic strain is seen, constraining the student to achieve the best results and satisfying the expectations of parents, teachers, and their expectations themselves. Social media usage also adds to its impact since teenagers are in touch with romantic images and experiences, in this manner cultivating a sensation of uncertainty and FOMO (fear of passing up a great entryway). Also, issues, for example, peer pressure, family relations, or financial issues could add to the deterioration of anxiety symptoms.

Screening Tools and Questions

In the health local area setting, I would use the Generalized Anxiety Issue 7 (GAD-7) scale to evaluate for anxiety tangle since a valid tool enables the evaluation of anxiety symptoms’ earnestness. In addition to the GAD-7 questionnaire (Riggs et al., 2019), I would propose certain conversation starters to learn about the given teenager and how they could be best supported.

    • How often do you feel apprehensive, anxious, or tense?
    • Do you find it challenging to control your inclinations?
    • How often do you experience physical symptoms like headaches, stomachaches, or muscle pressure? 
    • Do you avoid certain situations or activities because they make you anxious?
    • How might your anxiety affect your daily life, including school performance, social interactions, and family relationships?

Strategies to Establish a Therapeutic Relationship

Engaging a teenager in therapy requires a certain level of understanding, and building trust which is based on the yearning to communicate really. A couple of strategies are as follows (Hartley et al., 2020).
    • Active Listening: Guarantee you pay attention to what the teenager says and is involved by eye-to-eye association, head improvement, and verbal encouragement. Never interrupt them while they are speaking their hearts out.
    • Non-Judgmental Attitude: It is important to have the teenager open up and enable them to share ideas and their experiences without going through bias from someone they trust.
    • Confidentiality Assurance: Clarify in what circumstances that confidentiality isn’t valid and assure the teenager that their information will not be revealed. This is generally important for establishing trust in the advancement of interaction strategies.
    • Empathy and Validation: Let the teenager in on that you understand how they feel and empathize with what they have gone through. Assure the audience that whatever they are experiencing is alright to feel as such and be anxious in that particular scenario.
    • Predictable Follow-Up: Guarantee that the picked beneficiary has follow-up visits occasionally to track the headway and make any necessary changes to the care plan. Consistency is great in supporting the therapeutic relationship so therefore, clients ought to be predictable.

Legal and Ethical Parameters

As with any population, it is important while working with teenagers to wrap up the legal and ethical obligations about the issue of confidentiality and information sharing. Generally, the law allows minors of secondary school age to access medical administrations without the assent of parents where the administrations are being searched for because of unequivocal situations like mental health complications (Stoll et al., 2020). Nonetheless, there are circumstances when such a strategy is coordinated, including situations when the teenager or other individuals can experience dangerous outcomes.

Establishing Boundaries in Nurse-Teen Confidentiality for Safety

A medical caretaker ought to recall the teenager for a conversation where they ought to elucidate instances where the attendant ought to reveal information to the youth’s parents or legal guardians. For instance, each time a teenager reports to me that the individual wants to take their life or wants to hurt themself, the practitioner is required ethically and legally to answer to the parents or legitimate authorities to safeguard the teenager. Along these lines, the nature of this relationship is safe, and the teenager realizes that there are boundaries that should not be crossed.

Support Options and Contact Information

To support teenagers dealing with anxiety disorders, I would give information about various assets including school coordinating administrations, many secondary schools maintain an instructor on their premises, so the students can search for support and therapy. Local mental health organizations can give treatment to adolescents and may offer administrations like Individual therapy and Group therapy.

Online Support Resources and Crisis Helplines for Teen Mental Health

Online support groups are also a valid decision, nowadays there is the availability of several locales, for example, (www.TeenMentalHealth.Org) which offers online assistance groups for teenagers to group with offspring of similar issues, or other social media platforms (Domhardt et al., 2019). Crisis helplines inform the clients about all day, reliably crisis lines of the organization, including the National Collapse Counteraction Line at 1-800-273-8255. I trust by supplying these two assets the teenagers and their families will get the legitimate tools to adapt to anxiety.

References

Creswell, C., Walters, S., Halldorsson, B., & Lawrence, P. J. (2021). Anxiety disorders in children and young people.

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6ef1cd42-987c-4406-8bb8-6066371cc97d

Domhardt, M., Geßlein, H., von Rezori, R. E., & Baumeister, H. (2019). Internet- and mobile-based interventions for anxiety disorders: A meta-analytic review of intervention components. Depression and Anxiety, 36(3), 213–224.

https://doi.org/10.1002/da.22860

Hartley, S., Raphael, J., Lovell, K., & Berry, K. (2020). Effective nurse–patient relationships in mental health care: A systematic review of interventions to improve the therapeutic alliance. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 102, 103490.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.103490

Riggs, D. W., Pearce, R., Pfeffer, C. A., Hines, S., White, F., & Ruspini, E. (2019). Transnormativity in the psy disciplines: Constructing pathology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and Standards of Care. American Psychologist, 74(8), 912–924.

https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000545

Stoll, J., Müller, J. A., & Trachsel, M. (2020). Ethical issues in online psychotherapy: A narrative review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 10.

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00993