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Monday 10 December 2018

Adolescent Online Counselling

The Problem

Being young can be incredibly challenging. Adolescents can have all the problems an adult might experience with the added bonus of the raging emotional turmoil of teenage hormones, plus a very volatile social environment where in-group/out-group themes can feel like everything. At that age you don't know its normal to feel up and down and its likely you don't really understand why you feel the way you do.

On the extreme end of the spectrum, Japan has seen a thirty year high in youth suicide https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46096626  while there have been recent similarly concerning findings in the UK https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/04/suicide-rate-rises-among-young-people-in-england-and-wales

Adolescents can feel angry, depressed, scared, lonely, frustrated and very much in need to talk to someone - but talking to someone they know could be the very last thing they would want to do for a variety of reasons. They can feel embarrassed or ashamed to own up to their problems, too emotionally insecure to put such trust in someone close to them. Teens can readily feel the pressure of expectation from family, friends and school, networks that should exist to help them can end up having an opposite, negative effect.

How Can Counselling Help?

Counselling and advice services can provide help to teens by supporting them in a confidential, non-judgemental and near anonymous format. Services can take the form of face-to-face counselling, phone calls or online through webchat, email or forums.

Counselling is the most common form of talking therapy and can help young people deal with their issues and the impact they have been making upon their mental wellbeing. The counsellor will help explore the individual's problems and symptoms, and will aim to develop coping strategies to use in future scenarios.

Counselling can address a wide range of problems from anxiety, depression, bullying, relationships and self-harm, but is not recommended for more serious mental conditions which require more specialised treatment plans.

Different Types of Counselling

https://youngminds.org.uk/find-help/for-parents/parents-guide-to-support-a-z/parents-guide-to-support-counselling-services/ names these different types of counselling:

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
The approach of CBT is about thinking more positively about life, looking at  how you can get stuck in patterns of behaviour and ways of changing these rather than dwelling on past events. There are typically six or 12 weekly sessions and the therapist sets goals with the young person, often with ‘homework’ to do in between.

Mindfulness
Mindfulness is often combined with CBT and helps a young person to focus on difficult thoughts and feeling, rather than avoiding them, so that the fear of them gradually lessens. Therapists can also include meditation, yoga and breathing exercises.

Psychotherapy
This is a more long-term therapy and involves talking about the effects of past events and can be more helpful with long-term problems such as depression or eating disorders. NHS psychotherapists work in clinics or hospitals; some private psychotherapists work from home.

Family Therapy
The whole family works with the family therapist to try and understand the problems they are all having. It can help improve communications between family members and issues such as children’s behavioural problems, disability, family breakdown, addiction and domestic violence.

Online Counselling

The modern adolescent is very much at home with using technology in the form of smart phones/social media to communicate. With this in mind https://www.teencounseling.com/ has developed a system whereby teens receive counselling over their smart phones in webchat style forums, ideal for individuals who struggle to open up in a face to face environment.

3 comments:

Maheen Fatima said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Maheen Fatima said...

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Claire hast said...

Online counselling, once named alternative treatment, is presently turning into a typical practice.Both the specialist or therapist and the customer have the comfort of relating with one another at a scope of variation times. This style of treatment can fix the issue of planning and setting arrangements increasingly regular in customary settings. This likewise makes an open door for the specialist to stretch out their services to more customers.
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