MIND MOVES:Risk taking has an edge for adolescents, writes TONY BATES
A YOUNG mother with a teenage son asked to speak with me recently because she was disturbed by the way he was being treated within the mental health system. Dad had left them years before, but they had survived remarkably well as a family.
The boy was clearly in pain. He was intelligent, sensitive and cared deeply about his mam. But he also missed his dad and he had been feeling angry at his father for the way he had treated the family.
He spoke quietly in an honest way about what was happening in his life. Occasionally, his eyes would fill up, but whenever he became emotional he would tighten up. He described how when he was alone and slightly scared, he’d hear a voice saying his name.
The doctor said he was psychotic, but he thought he was okay; he knew this “voice” was just a thought in his head.
In spite of him being obviously down in himself, the boy’s mother felt he was basically sound. She saw him doing well with his friends, getting on famously in the local youth club, helping out at home. She also saw that he was struggling to cope with a lot of strong feelings, and that he needed some way to express them and learn to deal with them.
I was impressed at how this mother believed in her son and stuck by him. So often I see parents who feel daunted by hospitals and clinics. There they sometimes meet people with both authority and certainty. The parents often lose their voice and feel powerless when faced with a hard system.
But not this mother. Something about the words she heard used to diagnose her son didn’t feel right for her. So she asked questions of the doctor; she Googled words such as schizophrenia and psychosis. When these harsh words didn’t fit her experience of her son, she returned to the doctor again to discuss what might be a better way to help him.
I was surprised by her account of what she had been told as the boy seemed grounded, appropriate, insightful and very empathic. Maybe I was missing something?
What I saw was a young man with a broken heart, who was also a survivor. He was someone who was deeply loved, supported by his extended family and, for his age, was remarkably responsible.
When I speak with professional groups from every discipline, it’s clear that many of us are afraid of troubled adolescents. Some fine physicians have lost confidence in their innate ability to engage with and support a young person in crisis.
Young people, in turn, describe feeling confused and frightened of themselves. They often remark on how they see these same feelings mirrored back to them in the adults to whom they turn for help.
What we’re learning about young people today is that they are trying in every waking minute of their lives to make sense of who they are, to belong somewhere, and to figure out what to do with their lives. These questions are the same as the questions adults face every day in our lives.
We may frown on young people for their tendency to take risks and put their welfare in danger. But we often fail to appreciate that they hazard themselves into risky situations because the pay-off – when they succeed – means so much. Their self-confidence gets a boost, people notice and admire them, and their circle of friends widens.
Brain studies show clearly that risk-taking has been granted an edge at this point in the life span. It’s gets a young person out of the house, it gives them the courage to move outside their comfort zone, to risk exploring new places and opportunities. This, in turn, helps them to make that all-important transition to a place where they can stand on their own two feet and build a future for themselves.
When we act out of our fear of young people and insist on strategies that will keep them safe, my worry is that we stop listening. We can become so focused on trying to figure out what’s wrong with them that we fail to hear what’s underneath.
We may believe we’re “saving a life” when in fact we could be taking them out of their life and delaying their development, by not helping them to face real life problems head on.
Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – the National Centre for Youth Mental Health, headstrong.ie