Stability, Not Marriage, Key to Kids’ Happiness

A new study by an Ohio State University researcher found that it is the stability of the parent and the home, not marital status, that determines whether divorced children will thrive and be happy. The study found that children who grow up with a single mother are as likely to succeed academically and socially as those who grow up in traditional married-couple homes if the parent is emotionally stable and the home environment is stable. Published in the book Marriage and Family: Perspectives and Complexities, the study bolsters support for single-parents, gay couples, children being raised by grandparents or relatives, and other non-traditional families.

“Kids like to know what to expect,” Claire Kamp Dush, OSU assistant professor of human development and family science and study author, told The Columbus Dispatch. She explained that creating family stability means maintaining the status quo. Study data indicate that single mothers who do not move in with a new partner or remarry create the most stable home environments for their children. When home life was stable, Kamp Dush found no difference in levels of academic achievement, cognitive stimulation, emotional support or behavioral problems between children from single-parent and traditional married-couple homes.

Some researchers see a connection between stability and financial resources. Many other studies have found differences between children’s welfare and happiness in single-parent and married-couple homes. Many of those differences are rooted in financial circumstances and quality of education. When poverty enters into the equation, it can tip the balance against stable home life.

Single mothers worried about finances are more likely to suffer anxiety, depression and other emotional problems that can significantly impair the stability of home life. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 50% of children born to single mothers live below the poverty level. Statistics posted by The Heritage Foundation indicate that 35% of divorced mothers who receive child support and 42% of those who don’t live below the poverty line.

If you are struggling with single parenthood, a qualified psychiatrist like Dr. Tracey Marks can help you deal with the anger, anxiety, grief or depression you may be experiencing so that you can provide a stable home for your children.

Parents Must Temper Children’s Dreams With Reality

As parents, we all want our children to be happy in life and succeed. We encourage our children to dream big. We nourish our children’s dreams. We buy our future fireman a fireman’s hat at the toy store and take him to visit the local fire station. We invest in a piano and arrange music lessons for our budding concert pianist. We applaud our yet-to-be-discovered movie star by sending her to drama camp at the local college. We foster our emerging soccer star’s ambitions by signing up for a traveling team. There is nothing wrong with helping our children explore their dreams. It’s one way of letting them “try on” potential career choices to see how they fit. But some parents become so wrapped up in their children’s dreams that they lose perspective and fail to interject a necessary dose of reality.

When they are young, children’s dreams change quickly. Today’s fireman is tomorrow’s astronaut and next week’s rock star. But as children grow up, dreams begin to move them toward career paths. Sometimes parents co-opt their children’s dreams, reliving their own failed dreams or missed opportunities through their children. The dad who always wanted to be a high school quarterback pushes his son into football. The mom who dreamed of winning the lead in the high school play pressures her daughter into drama.

When parents force their own agenda onto their children’s dreams, children suffer. They are torn between their own interest or lack of interest and pleasing their parents. When parents “over-encourage” their children to succeed, particularly if the child expresses disinterest or feels uncomfortable with his ability to compete, children can become anxious. Constant anxiety can lead to insomnia, behavior problems, even depression and other emotional problems.

Parents need to take a step back and allow children to fully experience their own dreams. Certainly, provide opportunities to explore interests and talents; but temper dreams with reality. If your child warms the bench during the game, don’t step in and argue with the coach or make excuses that feed your child’s sense of entitlement. Allow your child the important lessons of disappointment and failure. Finding out for themselves whether they have the ability and skill to realize their dreams helps children to refine and restructure their dreams into attainable goals.

Widening Generation Gap Strains Family Relationships

Not since the 1960s have old and young Americans been so divided on basic social issues. Vietnam, civil rights and women’s liberation created a deep divide between today’s Baby Boomers and their WWII-era parents. Today the  flashpoints are morality, religion and relationships. The widening philosophical divide between the generations has the potential to drive an uncomfortable wedge between parents and their adult children.

Public opinion results recently released by the independent Pew Research Center indicate a widening gap between the generations. Eighty percent of those polled felt major discrepancies exist between the core values of older and younger U.S. adults. That’s a greater gap than the 74% reported in 1969, the peak in a decade of generational strife. Since 1979, the nation’s perceived generation gap had been fairly stable at about 60% but started increasing during the Obama/Bush campaign.

Different social values and opposing views on morality were cited by nearly 50% of survey respondents as the greatest stressors between the generations. Older adults complained about the younger generation’s sense of entitlement and lack of social manners. Younger adults aged 18 to 29 who expressed wider acceptance of interracial relationships and gay marriage felt contradictory views on family, dating and relationships caused the most generational strife.

Some older adults felt youthful attitudes on family and relationship issues signaled moral decline among the young. Such generational differences may be as much religious as cultural. Two-thirds of adults 65 and older indicated that religion played a key role in their lives compared to about half of adults 30 to 49. Only 44% of those 18 to 29 said religion was important to them. Older adults tended to equate religious beliefs/practice with moral values. However, younger adults more often defined moral issues in terms of social justice and independent from religious belief.

Generation gap issues can create stress, anxiety, even anger between family members that can take a serious toll on family relationships. Open discussion, tolerance and respect for each others’ viewpoints is essential if families are to bridge generational divides. When differences exist between parents and their adult children, it is important to recognize that each adult has the right to make his/her own choices and set the rules in his/her own home.

Risk Factors for Mental Health Problems

This week we’ve been talking about the activities and behaviors that make for good mental health (see our July 13 and 15, 2009 posts). Throughout our lives, many forces shape our emotional well-being, both internal and external. Particular events in our lives, genetic and biological factors, and childhood experiences impact our ability to develop and maintain good mental health. And sometimes life throws us a curve ball and a combination of stressful events can overburden our ability to cope emotionally, triggering anxiety, depression or other mental health conditions.

Researchers have found specific risk factors that can impact mental health. Some, like unaddressed childhood issues, slowly chip away at our ability to cope with life’s problems, creating difficulties years after the actual events took place. Others, like the death of a parent, child or spouse, overwhelm our defenses by the sheer enormity of the event and its impact on our life. Being aware of the following potential risk factors can help us maintain good mental health:

• Lack of connection to a primary caretaker during childhood can have lifelong repercussions. Feelings of loneliness, isolation, confusion, lack of safety or abuse felt as a child can negatively color our behavior into adulthood.
• Serious trauma, death of a parent, war, hospitalization, tragic accidents and other devastating events, particularly during early childhood, can have a  traumatic effect on emotional development.
• Learned helplessness can undermine our faith in our ability to cope with life’s problems. Negative experiences or comments can undermine our confidence in our ability to exert control over our life.
• Chronic or disabling illness can isolate you from other people, denying you the necessary social support of friends and family.
• Medication side effects can affect mental health, particularly in the elderly who generally take multiple medications, creating the potential for problematic drug interactions.
• Alcohol and drug abuse can both cause and exacerbate preexisting mental health problems. Substance abuse can serve as a trigger for latent emotional conditions.

The risk factors that negatively impact our mental health can be counteracted by supportive relationships, a healthy lifestyle, stress management techniques and emotional coping strategies. You may need professional psychiatric help to regain good mental health, but you can improve your psychological well-being. If efforts to improve your mental health have been unsuccessful, it’s time to see a professional psychiatrist and get the help you need.

Learning to Control Anger

Anger is one of our most basic survival instincts. We use anger to protect ourselves from threat and defend ourselves against attack. But losing control of our anger can be physically and psychologically destructive. There are three basic ways people deal with anger:

• Expressing angry feelings assertively but without aggression is the healthiest way to deal with anger. Passion is fine, but not force. Expressing our needs is crucial to our well-being at any time, but particularly when we’re angry. We become angry when we perceive that our needs are not being met in some way. The ability to clearly tell others what we need and how we are feeling is the first step toward getting our needs met. The process helps dissipate and resolve anger as we compromise with others and develop a plan to meet our needs. However, it’s important to be respectful of the needs and boundaries of others.
• Suppressing anger can take two forms.  The most direct form of suppression is when we deny ourselves a way to express and thereby release our anger. When anger is internalized, it can fester and grow, becoming destructive. Redirection is another way of suppressing anger. Rather than confront the source of our anger directly, we channel angry energy into a more constructive activity, such as brisk walking, jogging, sports, house cleaning, gardening, etc. While not addressing the source of our anger or resolving it, redirection provides a non-confrontational release for angry feelings. However, without expression and resolution, anger will return and can become pathological. Suppressed anger can lead to chronic high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, passive-aggressive behavior or a hostile attitude.
• Calming techniques help us calm down and allow our anger to subside. Self-help techniques like meditation, deep breathing, guided imagery and muscle relaxation can be used to help us regain control of our physical and emotional responses to anger, allowing us to let go of anger.

People who are unable to express their anger or unable to  develop effective methods of resolving anger or whose inability to control their anger is affecting their personal relationships may need help learning to control and manage their anger from a board-certified psychiatrist trained in cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Road Rage: Losing Control of Anger

The orange cones are out and the length of your morning commute just doubled. It’s summer in America when construction crews seem to shut down miles of highway to work on one tiny 10-foot section at a time. Slowly snaking traffic plays havoc with your schedule, creating stress and anxiety. You worry about being late for work or an appointment or picking up the kids from daycare; but you can’t make the traffic move any faster, which creates more stress. Then there are the annoying drivers who try to whiz past you on the berm, and those infuriating idiots who streak by in the ever-narrowing left lane to dart into line ahead of you. When traffic snarls, it’s not long before frustrated drivers start snarling too!

We call it road rage and make jokes about it, but mixing anger with highway traffic isn’t funny; it’s a dangerous combination and not just because it so often leads to traffic accidents. Anger makes your heart rate and blood pressure go up. Anger also increases the levels of your “energy” hormones, adrenalin and noradrenalin. While completely normal and entirely human, when anger gets out of hand it can be physically and psychologically destructive.

Aggression is the body’s instinctive response to anger. It’s an ingrained survival instinct that protects us from threat and allows us to defend ourselves, our family and our home — our car — from attack. Anger is a basic survival skill that ensured our ancestors could escape wild beasts and protect themselves from marauding tribes. In today’s world where the predators are less physical and more complex, raw anger can be more of a hindrance than a help in navigating life.

Some people are quicker to anger than others and some lose control of their anger more easily than others. Researchers believe genetics may be a factor, but they are also looking for a physiological trigger, most likely a portion of the brain that governs anger or a chemical imbalance in the brain that causes some people to act more violently than others. The laws and customs of modern society limit the rein we can give our anger, but events, people and orange cones on a crowded summer highway can send anger spinning out of control if we’re not careful. Today, learning to control anger has become a necessary survival skill.

Next time: Learning to Control Anger

Stress, Depression Plague Collegiates

College students are feeling the pressure, and they’re not just worrying about grades. Money and relationships are creating as much stress and depression on college campuses as schoolwork, according to a recent Associated Press-mtvU poll of college students on 40 campuses. Of the collegiates polled, 85% reported daily feelings of stress, the Associated Press reported. In addition, 42% said they had felt depressed or hopeless within the past two weeks, 13% showed signs of mild depression, and 11% said they’d had suicidal thoughts.

While 74% of the students were stressed about grades, concern over financial matters ran a close second, worrying 67% of the survey group. Half of the students (52%) were stressed about the economy, many saying that financial problems brought about by the recession could impact their ability to register for fall classes. Fifty-four percent of the students surveyed were stressed about family issues, and nearly half (47%) were worried about finding a job after graduation. Across the board, collegiates felt they were under more stress this year than last year. In all categories, collegiates surveyed in 2009 expressed a 3% to 6% increase in stress levels over their 2008 peers.

Students experiencing high levels of stress said they lacked energy, were having trouble sleeping and/or felt hopeless; but few  said they had sought professional help. At the University of Maryland in College Park, two student suicides within two weeks shocked students last semester, but didn’t seem to change students’ views about seeking help.

“It was pretty scary,” admitted UM junior Aimee Mayer, a psychology major. While she said the university provides students with plenty of information and help with mental disorders, Mayer told the Associated Press, “there’s still a stigma associated with mental health issues and so a lot of people don’t want to go to those services. They feel like they’re less cool or something like that it they go. It’s like a sign of vulnerability.”

That’s an unfortunate attitude because depression can be successfully treated using a combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy and sometimes medications. When given the opportunity to intervene, psychiatrists can also identify potential suicide victims and help them before they act. Many mental health disorders begin early in life, so it is not unusual for symptoms to emerge under the stress of college life. Parents should talk to their children regularly to gauge their mental health.

June Bride, July Blues

There’s something about June and brides. Surpassed only by Valentine’s Day as America’s most popular wedding date, thousands of brides choose to be married in June. For the typical year it takes to plan a modern American wedding, these women, and often their mothers (and to a slightly lesser extent their intended and both families), immerse themselves in the myriad details necessary to plan the perfect wedding.

Of course, weddings are exciting; and today’s typical wedding includes scores of intricate details and “crucial” decisions. It’s easy to get so caught up in the details of planning the wedding that brides and grooms forget to focus on the importance of the life change they are making. Though it often becomes an all-consuming event, in reality the wedding is just a small moment in a marriage. Moving from the autonomy of being single to the shared decision-making and compromise necessary to build a successful marriage is a major life change. Unfortunately, the cultural pressure to create the perfect wedding often overshadows the true meaning and challenges of this life-changing event.

Some women become so immersed in the bride role that the return to normalcy is such a let-down that it triggers a type of depression called “wedding withdrawal” or “post-wedding blues.” Once the big day is over and the honeymoon ended, the humdrum reality of newlywed life sets in. In a short week, brides go from being the center of attention with a full planning calendar and social agenda to the ho-hum daily reality of fixing meals, going back to work, and adjusting to married life. From sharing the bathroom to pooling money and making decisions together, marriage is filled with new challenges. Many newlyweds, however, find the role of wife less glamorous and exciting than the role of bride and depression can set in.

If you find yourself feeling sad after the wedding is over, talk to your spouse. Talk about the reasons you chose to get married, your commitment to each other, and your love for each other. Seek help from a psychiatrist skilled in cognitive-behavioral therapy if your depression lasts. As you plan your wedding, work to keep the event in its greater perspective. Your wedding day is just the first step in a lifelong celebration of your life together with your new spouse.

Next Page »