Teen Depression
Your teen’s mood changes are disrupting the family. They cry often, they’ve withdrawn, and their eating and sleeping patterns have changed. You’re scared because this is not the teen you’ve known. When you ask them what’s wrong, they say that they just don’t feel like themselves, and when you look in their eyes, they seem empty.
Lately, it’s as if a weight is on their shoulders, constantly pushing them further and further down. You can’t imagine your teen sinking any lower into this emotional abyss, and you desperately want to throw them a lifeline.
So, here you are, ready to get the ball rolling and pull your teen from sadness into happiness again.
A lot of the time, your teen feels overwhelmed by life and the expectations, rules, roles, people, and routines that make up their world. And, you know it’s time to get them the help that they need.
You truly want your teen to find their place in this world and to move into that space fully equipped and confident. But, you have no idea how that will ever happen if they can’t seem to feel excited for their future. You never imagined seeing despair cross your teen’s face. And, you certainly didn’t expect that it would be leading your teen away from the goals that they once envisioned. You’re ready for answers.
Signs That Your Teen is Struggling with Depression
- Behavioral: your teen is sad, irritable, uninterested in things and/or people, or isolates themselves socially
- Cognitive: your teen has trouble concentrating or thoughts of suicide or hopelessness
- Mood: your teen often feels guilty, hopeless, disinterested, sad, or experiences mood swings
When You Seek Support for Teen Depression from The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management
- Your teen will feel free from despair and irritability
- Your teen will engage in activities with family and friends
- Your teen will experience relief from the weight on their shoulders
- Your teen will develop higher self-esteem
- Your teen will have more hope for the future
The Teen Depression Counseling Process
Therapy for teen depression is intended to help your teen stop feeling so sad and hopeless. Together, your teen and their therapist will work with scientifically-backed, evidence-based therapies to help them gain control of their inner and outer worlds in more effective ways.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for teens with depression is scientifically-backed and evidence-based to help them learn to identify their triggers and overcome them in such a way as to be successful in school, with family, and with peers.
Here’s what to expect…
FIRST CONTACT : Free phone consult
Prior to beginning treatment with us, we want to make sure that we are a good fit for your teen’s needs. For this reason, we offer a free 15-minute initial phone consult to learn more about your teen’s current circumstances and to determine if we are the best resource for you. Assuming that we are a good match, you will then schedule an intake session.
WEEK ONE : Intake Session
During this initial 90-minute session, the assigned therapist will meet with you as the parent(s) or guardian(s) to gather background information on your teen and have you fill out rating scales to provide an assessment baseline upon which to build our treatment plan and goals.
WEEK TWO : Teen Intake Session
During this 45- to 60-minute session, the therapist will interview your teen as well as meet with you as the parent(s) to ask any follow-up questions which may be helpful in treatment planning and goal-setting to best meet your teen’s needs.
WEEK THREE : Feedback Session
Now that we’ve thoroughly assessed your teen’s needs, we will meet with you to discuss the diagnoses, identify starting goals, and provide education on the apparent causes and factors which are leading to your teen’s troubling thoughts and behaviors.
WEEK FOUR and Beyond : Teen Depression Therapy
At this point, your teen will attend regular weekly therapy sessions. A typical course of treatment calls for 12 to 16 weeks of therapy sessions, but treatment length depends on many factors and, therefore, could require more or less weeks. Additionally, your teen’s therapist may determine that your teen need to come more or less frequently, depending upon your teen’s presenting symptoms.
Together, in each subsequent session, your teen and their therapist will use evidence-based psychotherapy models to help your teen learn to identify and address the challenges they experience because of depression. This typically includes the integration of techniques from Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-Based CBT, or other evidence-based modalities.
Each session is designed to help your teen learn to discover more about and accept themselves for who they are.
TERMINATION : The Final Sessions
As your teen gets closer to their therapy goals, we will develop a plan for successfully transitioning them into a life without weekly therapy. This often means moving sessions from once a week to every other week, to monthly sessions, or to finishing out services completely. We also work with you and your teen to develop a relapse prevention plan at this time. Our goal is for your teen to be able to retain what they’ve worked on and to implement all that they have learned in therapy outside of sessions in their everyday life.
More About The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management
As a team of licensed therapists, we are experts at teaching you to make the behavioral choices that get you closer to your goals.
We work from an evidence-based perspective. This means that our job is to help you understand your struggles and provide solutions proven to be very effective. Negative thoughts, distressing feelings, and unhelpful behaviors don’t have to be part of your life, and anxiety therapy at The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management is about changing the way you think, recognizing how your beliefs are holding you back, becoming informed, seeing the world more accurately, and engaging in behaviors that you won’t regret later.
We make it our mission to help you regain control of your life by providing effective strategies supported by science. We are dedicated to being on top of the most recent knowledge and helping you solve problems based on what the research says is effective. It is our passion to educate you on what is and isn’t working in your life so that you can get back in the driver’s seat and take yourself where you want to go.
Who Benefits Most from Depression Counseling for Teens
Therapy for teens with depression is best for those who are experiencing overwhelming sadness, irritability, anger, hopelessness, and/or social withdrawal. With the use of scientifically-validated and evidence-based therapy techniques, your teen can start to have hope for the future.
Your teen will benefit from depression therapy if :
- They are avoiding people, places, or situations they used to enjoy
- They can’t concentrate, and everything feels overwhelming
- They have suddenly stopped sleeping or sleep all day long
- They have changed their eating habits
- They feel hopeless about their future
There are certain situations where your teen might not be ready for counseling sessions with us.
These include, but are not limited to :
- Situations where your family’s schedules are too busy to commit to weekly therapy
- Situations where the teen or parent does not want to practice the techniques outside of session
- Situations where parents are not committed to the process
- Situations when someone wants a quick fix
If you are currently experiencing any of these issues, we can provide you with appropriate referrals for your level of care.
What Does Therapy for Teen Depression Cost?
Depression counseling for teens is a fee-for-service program which means that we require payment at the time services are provided. We would be considered an out-of-network provider and would be happy to provide you with receipts which include all of the information you’d need for submitting directly to your insurance company for your own reimbursement.
When and Where are the Counseling Sessions?
Our office is conveniently located in Chester, NJ, 07930 next to the New Toys with Love building.
Sessions are currently held by appointment only Monday – Saturday.
Your Next Steps
It’s entirely possible for your teen to overcome depression.
A happy, fully engaged teen may seem a long way away, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t start to take small steps toward better self-esteem. They just need the support of a caring professional and evidence-based treatment strategies while they move to overcome it.
Your teen will be able to more fully engage in their everyday life. And, your family will have harmony in your home. Ultimately, your teen will be able to handle the tougher times in life. We can help.
Call 908-914-2624 or email us (info@anxietyandbehaviornj.com) to schedule your 15-minute phone consult to see if we’re a good fit for your child’s anger needs today!