Maintaining mental well-being can be especially challenging during adolescence. It’s an intense season of transformation, development, and self-discovery, not to mention confusing emotions. Depression and anxiety are common, with one in seven 10- to 19-year-olds worldwide experiencing a mental health condition.
Why does mental health impact a person physically?
How I explain it to teens and their families is our emotions oftentimes feed into how we feel physically. There’s an interconnectedness between the mind and the body. I think it’s safe to say we can all think of a time when we weren’t feeling our best mentally, and physically we didn’t have the desire or the energy to participate in things we would normally enjoy doing.
Teens who experience chronic pain are at a higher risk for developing mental health challenges over time. They tend to feel more down and withdrawn and they’re not able to do the things that we know are really beneficial for helping with chronic pain, such as being active and getting a good night’s sleep. That makes the pain worse, and it becomes this vicious cycle that kids can get stuck in.
Additionally, statistics show that for people who have an anxiety or mood disorder, their chances of having a co-occurring pain disorder increases by 50 to 60%.
What are examples of physical responses to mental health challenges in children?
It’s common in younger kids especially for them to talk about having a nervous tummy. When they’re feeling really anxious, they might say they have a “funny feeling” in their stomach, their stomach hurts, or they feel nauseous like they’re going to throw up.
Older kids can also express that in addition to headaches and/or fatigue. It becomes sort of a feedback loop where kids feel anxious, then they’re having symptoms like a stomachache, and they start to worry about not being able to go to school and getting behind.
It’s important to make sure with the help of your child’s pediatrician that the physical symptoms aren’t the result of an underlying medical condition.
Parents and caregivers should be concerned if they notice:
- A decrease in day-to-day functioning, such as the child isn’t going to school for multiple days out of the week for weeks on end.
- Lack of engagement and participation in activities the child used to enjoy. When mental health is impacting a child physically, everything feels harder, almost heavy, like getting out of bed in the morning, being around people, and controlling emotions.
- Symptoms of a mental health challenge, like withdrawal, sadness, hopelessness, or anxiety.
How can mental health treatment help with physical pain?
It’s a very complex interconnection. From the mental health aspect of it, treatment is about teaching kids coping skills to help them better manage their emotions and challenge their thoughts—that’s what we teach through cognitive behavioral therapy. We work with kids on their assumptions and how they might be catastrophizing the pain. Adolescents can think because they have pain, “I’m not going to be able to play sports,” or “I’m never going to live the life I want to live.” We teach them how to challenge their thinking and have a more balanced view, helping them align their actions around what their values and goals are so they can get back to a more typical life.
Physically, we have therapy to teach them that their bodies can move. They may not be able to run a mile, but we work with them until they progress to the point where they are running and more active. A lot of times with chronic pain disorders there’s hypersensitivity that develops over time, especially when kids start fixating on the pain.
What is the Integrative Healing Program?
Rogers is proud to partner with Children’s Wisconsin to offer the Integrated Healing Program, an intensive outpatient mental health and rehabilitation service for teens struggling with both pain and functional disorders occurring with mental health conditions.
Multidisciplinary teams, including Rogers’ child and adolescent psychiatrists and psychologists, and medical, health psychology, and physical therapy experts from the Jane B. Pettit Pain and Headache Center at Children’s Wisconsin, collaborate to provide intensive rehabilitative, medical services, and mental health treatment.
The collaborative services are available for teens ages 13 through 18. The first step in determining whether a teen is a good fit for the program is to have them medically evaluated. Prospective patients will be evaluated by providers at the Pain and Headache Center and Rogers. Services are provided Monday through Friday, 8 am to 4 pm. To schedule an evaluation, call 414-266-3955.
By Gregory Evangelatos, MD, psychiatrist, Integrated Healing Program, Rogers Behavioral Health in Brown Deer
Rogers offers mental health treatment for children and teens
Rogers offers compassionate, personalized care for children and adolescents nationwide. Call 833-308-5887 for a free, confidential screening.
