Keyana Blanchard

Argumentative Research Paper

UWRT 1101-008
Professor Turgeon
20 February 2017

Parental Invalidation of Mental Health in Adolescents

In America, 20% of youth between the ages of thirteen and eighteen have been diagnosed

with a mental health condition (NIMH). On a broader scale, 50% of all cases of mental illness

show symptoms beginning by the age of fourteen years old. Yet despite these alarming statistics,

the average delay between the first symptoms and intervention is eight to ten years. Parents play

a crucial role on the decisions made about their childrens health during these adolescent years.

Therefore when parents, whether by conscious decision or not, invalidate their childrens feelings

as well as symptoms and expressions of mental illness they not only delay treatment but also

help to perpetuate the mental illness.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death in Americans between the ages of ten and

twenty-four. Not coincidentally, 90% of those who committed suicide had a history of underlying

mental illness (NIMH). When parents see certain behaviors in their child such as feeling

withdrawn or unmotivated for more than two weeks, risky behaviors, severe mood swings, or

drastic changes in personality, they are seeing the warning of signs of adolescent mental illness.

In some cases, teens can start to even notice and feel these changes within themselves and

approach their parents about getting a mental health checkup. However, it is not uncommon for

parents to invalidate these concerns about their childrens health. Parents may attribute this

behavior to stress, exhaustion, problems at school, and hormonal fluctuations due to puberty.

This is not done out of malice, but parents tend to have a hard time attributing real world

afflictions to their own children who seem too young to have any real problems.

Adults typically look at the world in a way that is different than adolescents. They see

through a lens of concrete facts and figures. For adults it is easy to feel like teenagers dont have
Keyana Blanchard
Argumentative Research Paper
UWRT 1101-008
Professor Turgeon
20 February 2017

anything to truly worry about. Teenagers dont pay bills, or work a full time job, or have to

provide for their families so in the eyes of adults, they have nothing to truly worry or be sad

about. However, being a teenager in todays society is so much more than what it looks like at

the surface level. Adolescents are trying to become who they are going to be for the rest of their

lives, while also being someone that their parents, their peers, and themselves approve of.

Moreover, mental illness defies what adults tend to defy the rules of what adults deem to be real

problems because at its very definition mental illness is not based on the amount of problems

that someone has, it is not based on how many reasons someone has to be sad. Mental illness is

broadly defined as a condition that affects a persons thinking, feeling, or mood(NAMI). It is a

health condition. Even if someone appears to have the perfect life, with no stressful factors

whatsoever, they can still be afflicted with a mental illness. It is not based on how hard your life

is, or how much responsibility you are saddled with, and therefore can affect people at any age.

Adults also typically stigmatize mental illness in a way that skews their idea of what it

truly is. They associate mental illness with words like crazy and fragile. They would be ashamed

to admit that they are on medication for mental illness or that they go to therapy or have spent

time in a psychiatric hospital. Their shame is then inflicted onto their children. They dont want

their children to have a mental illness because they want them to be normal. In order to avoid

the truth they rationalize the behaviors exhibited by their children, attributing symptomatic

behaviors to stress, hormones, or lack of sleep. By consistently invalidating their childrens

emotions and concerns, they are actually perpetuating the symptoms of a mental illness. These

children feel misunderstood, so they withdraw from their daily life and activities even more.

They may turn to drugs and alcohol to distract themselves from how they feel. They feel alone,
Keyana Blanchard
Argumentative Research Paper
UWRT 1101-008
Professor Turgeon
20 February 2017

like no one understands what they are going through, and think that they are damaged in some

way. And most importantly an adolescent with a mental illness can turn to suicide because they

never got the treatment that they needed because their illness was never recognized for what it

was.
Keyana Blanchard
Argumentative Research Paper
UWRT 1101-008
Professor Turgeon
20 February 2017

Works Cited

"Living with Postpartum Depression." NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness. N.p., n.d.
Web. 20 Feb. 2017.

"Mental Health Facts in Children and Teens." National Institutes of Health. U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2017.