Adolescents at the risk of anxiety, teen depression and suicide generally wear their troubles like a neon sign. If you are a parent and if your teen shows risky behaviors like consuming too much of alcohol, skipping school, smoking too much and using illegal drugs, you should be conscious that serious problems are on the way.
New risk group:
According to a report submitted by a new study, it is found that many teens, who use a lot of media and do not get adequate exercise or sleep are in the danger of serious mental health issues. It is found that these kids are experiencing the same level of symptoms as their high-risk peers. Even, those having a sedentary lifestyle with the influence of media are known to be at higher risk. Now, you might think this to be a description of every teenager.
Unobstructive behaviors:
Even though, most of the kids follow this type of lifestyle nowadays and every parent is asking their kid to get off the phone and go to sleep early, it is difficult to identify the child with teen depression. This is why teens falling under this risk are pointed out as an invisible risk group by experts. Many parents these days overlook the behaviors of watching too much television, sleeping too little and not playing and these are pointed out by experts as unobstructive behaviors and so parents should be aware.
High-risk behaviors:
This study was conducted among 12,395 students between the age group of 14 and 16 and totally nine risk behavior were identified in this study and they are as follows: absenteeism, high use of media, sedentary routine, being underweight, overweight, reduction in sleep, high level of smoking, illegal use of drug and excessive use of alcohol. When your child has any of these behaviors, it is better to be cautious and the objective of this study is to identify the relationship between these risky behaviors and mental health problems in teenage boys and girls.
The reports:
The results of the study showed that nearly 58% of the students showed none or only a few of the risky behaviors. About 13% of them scored high on all these nine behaviors, while 29% of them fall under the category of invisible risk as they scored higher on three of them in particular. This means that they spend five hours per day on surfing the internet, playing video games and watching television without any relation to their education or work. They had only six hours or lesser than this time at nights. Also, they neglected healthy activities like sports.
The group of children, who scored high on all nine behaviors was more likely to show the symptoms of teen depression. The invisible group was not behind the high-risk group as 13% of them showed symptoms of depression.
So, Vladimir Carli, who is a researcher at the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Ill Health at the Karolinska Institute has suggested that parents should make sure that their kids are not allowed to use electronics in their room. She also has suggested parents to encourage their teenage kids to exercise.