What Are Mood challenges in Children and Teens and How Can we Help?
Mood challenges in children and teens include heightened reactivity, mood swings, and difficulty coping with emotions. These can manifest as depression, sadness, irritability, loss of interest in activities, and low self-confidence. Such challenges may interfere with daily functioning, strain relationships, and hinder a child's ability to reach their full potential.
At Milestones, we help identify and address mood disorders and challenges with diagnostic evaluations and evidence-based therapeutic approaches to support your child’s emotional well-being. Our clinicians educate on how thoughts, feelings and behaviors are connected, and design individualized treatment plans that improve daily life. We specialize in addressing a range of mood challenges faced by children and teens. By using evidence based strategies to help reduce negative symptoms and manage mood more effectively, our clinicians empower children, teens and families.
Common Mood Challenges
-
There are many forms of mood regulation vulnerabilities. Heightened reactivity, mood swings, and the inability to cope with emotions all contribute to unstable mood conditions. This may include difficulty registering emotions, challenges with responding and communicating with others, trouble navigating emotional responses in social settings, inability to control emotions, and more.
-
Depression and sadness can appear in people of all ages, but they tend to be particularly troubling when present in children. Depression may present as sadness but it can also look like irritability, loss of interest in activities children used to enjoy, isolation, hopelessness, extreme lethargy, a change in eating patterns, apathy, and other behavioral changes. At Milestones Psychology, our team is well-equipped to diagnose depression in children and teens and develop treatment protocols to help them work through these challenges.
-
Self-confidence in children can have a major impact on their overall state of well-being. Lower self-confidence and self-esteem may stem from bullying, pressure at home, pressure in school, peer pressure, or comparing to others. The clinicians at Milestones Psychology work with children to bolster their self-confidence by actively listening and teaching strategies for long-term success.
If your child or teen is struggling with mood challenges, don't hesitate to reach out. Contact Milestones Psychology today to learn more about our services and how we can support your family on the journey toward positive change.
