Helping Your Children With Depression
Jenn Bovee, LCSW, CRADC, CCHt
EMDR Trained
Over the course of my career, I have worked with many parents of children who are struggling with depression. Often times, these parents are not interested in treating their children with psychotropic medications. Additionally, it can be hard to find a psychiatrist locally who can treat children suffering from depression in a timely manner.
I rarely have an opinion on whether a parent should treat holistically or should go the medicine route.
My typical stance is, as the parent, you need to be the decision-maker. I will typically support any decision informed parents make. Therefore, I have a list of suggestions that I typically give my clients as resources to help eliminate their children’s depression.
Clearly this is not an exhaustive list, but it’s my top go-to’s:
1. Fun ways to learn something new: New learning has been shown to help heal our brains and keep our brains healthy. Whether it’s an educational game or learning a foreign language, learning new things is crucial to our brain health.
2. Expose your child to sunlight: Sunlight can help increase the amount of vitamin D a person has in their body. Vitamin D has also been proven to boost moods.
3. Check Gut Issues: Recently so much research has come out about how there is a second brain in our guts. Many people have actually begun to believe that a lack of a healthy gut, typically indicates depression. So when people are experiencing depression, I always recommend them looking at their gut health.
4. Encourage Fun: I regularly talk to the clients I work with about the importance and validity of having (non-electronic) fun. Encourage your children to engage in fun and play utilizing imagination and fantasy. This is so healing and healthy for their brains.
5. Limit Electronic Exposure: Many people, across the board, are living a life of constant stimulation to electronics. Whether it’s television, cell phones, tablets, computers, the list is really endless. Limiting the time that our children are exposed to such stimulation is both helpful and healing. For example, the blue light emitted from televisions stimulate the brain. The amount of stimulation from an Ipad can deplete the amount of melatonin in the brain.
6. Get Healing Sleep: When humans don’t experience REM sleep they are at a higher risk to develop both anxiety and depression. Getting deep, healing sleep is crucial to not only the mental well being of our children but also their physical wellbeing. I always recommend the clients I work with establish a solid bedtime routine to help them achieve their sleep goals.
7. Hypnosis: I’ve seen the most impressive changes in children’s mental health while using hypnosis. Using hypnosis allows us to access the programming that creates the depression cycle and change or interrupt that depressive pattern. Hypnosis is super simple and has a lasting effect to create long term change.
No matter what route you decide to take for treating your child’s depression, I want to make sure that you understand that you are not alone. My recommendation is to do some research, try different modalities, and don’t be afraid or ashamed of trying medication.
If you need additional assistance, please reach out to us at The Mental Wellness Center, Inc. Our phone number is 309-807-5077.