parents Archives - Page 2 of 2

November 21, 2022

Teen mental health issues are on the rise. Here’s how parents can help.

Remark

As a clinical psychologist, I generally come across myself sitting across from higher education college students having difficulties with difficulties this kind of as stress and anxiety and suicidality, who confide that their mom and dad don’t get it. Not surprisingly, I also function with mothers and fathers of youthful adults who want to enable their youngsters but simply cannot appear to be to connect. It can be disheartening that folks who subject deeply to just about every other misread cues at vital psychological junctures, but component of what I educate mother and father is how to assist their teenagers experience read and supported so they can move forward.

Around 50 percent of adolescents meet the requirements for a psychiatric analysis at some level, and we have all heard of the unmet mental overall health concerns in teens alongside with relating to prices of suicidality. Whilst young grownups crave autonomy, the prefrontal cortex — the component of the brain that manages wondering flexibly and controlling impulses — carries on to establish till age 25, which indicates that nonetheless experienced they look, your teenager requirements adult support when it arrives to regulating thoughts and handling crises.

Nonetheless, I’ve observed even the most effectively-which means dad or mum worry when their boy or girl is having difficulties with mental health troubles, then inadvertently say the incorrect issue this sort of as, “you’re overreacting.” In some cases they supply youngsters much too substantially place, assuming their teenager will come to them with a dilemma. But there are effective ways to empower your adolescent, together with doing the job on taking care of your individual emotions, asking the appropriate questions and helping to decide the amount of guidance they will need.

Observe remaining variety and nonjudgmental: To increase the probability of your teenager opening up to you in really hard situations, it’s practical to be open and heat in normal times. It can also assist to remind by yourself that experience distress is portion of remaining a young grownup, says psychologist Lisa Damour, writer of “Under Tension,” and the co-host of the podcast “Ask Lisa: The Psychology of Parenting.” “Part of how we can assist young individuals is to normalize tension,” she states.

Do not be a “snowplow parent”: It is not your task to remove any possible complications your adolescent is facing. Suffering from and coping with problems and failures can show to be a “hidden curriculum” that will help young older people increase and discover their intent, say Belle Liang and Timothy Klein, authors of “How to Navigate Everyday living.”

A lot of mother and father I deal with, specifically all those who working experience anxiety on their own, come to feel eager to rush in to help you save the working day close to non-urgent troubles these types of as assisting their teenager make up for a late assignment. That only retains their youthful adult from mastering from repercussions and acquiring far better trouble-resolving techniques. In its place, Damour recommends listening and empathizing, which decreases the intensity of unfavorable emotions. Relatively than coming into repair-it mode, the purpose should really be to “help your young particular person construct a broader repertoire for managing,” Damour advises. That may well incorporate talking about cultivating wholesome behavior such as having ample slumber, working out and steering very clear of substances.

Give them hope: If your teen is having difficulties with troubles more critical than ordinary stress, this kind of as depression or anxiousness, enable them know that what they’re suffering from is not permanent and that emotion improved is possible and inside attain. “Symptoms of melancholy never define you, they are portion of your lifestyle encounter and will alter through energy, adaptive coping strategies and locating the appropriate supports,” advises Jessica Schleider, a psychologist and assistant professor at Stonybrook University. Schleider developed transient one session interventions that are cost-free on line, that help lower hopelessness and depression, especially if you are waiting around to satisfy with a professional.

Talk to about self-damage ideas: If you are anxious, having said that, that your boy or girl is thinking of suicide or self-damage, “the solitary greatest issue is to collect by yourself and uncover a way to request about that immediately,” claims David Jobes, a psychologist and professor at Catholic College who created the Collaborative Assessment and Administration of Suicidality, an evidence-dependent scientific intervention to aid prevent suicide. He encourages moms and dads to rally their power, technique their cherished one at a good time when you have their undivided awareness, then be immediate — “Are points at any time so negative that you believe about suicide? Do you at any time have ideas of doing things to hurt your self?” — and make absolutely sure you’re ready to listen to the response. “You need to listen and just listen to it and keep it, fairly than invalidating, preempting or pointing items out,” Jobes suggests. “You want to convey the concept that we’re in this article, regardless of whether that’s bodily, or emotionally on the mobile phone, or by textual content. We’ve acquired you.”

Lots of young older people are terrified of broaching suicidal feelings with their parents, which can imply that suicidal views aren’t talked over right up until there is an emergency. That’s why it’s so crucial to lay the groundwork for your teen to truly feel relaxed sharing. Also, retain in thoughts views of suicide are pretty frequent, with almost 10 percent of people possessing these feelings around the study course of their lives.

“We can all have views that come to feel eerie, they are just feelings, and we can converse about them collectively,” Schleider claims, introducing that it is crucial your teenager is aware of they can occur to you. While suicidal feelings can feel terrifying and warrant in search of professional help, keep in mind that you will have to be an individual your baby can change to, so really do not overreact. Alternatively, intention to go into these discussions organized with probable means.

Lean on analysis-centered techniques: As a mum or dad, Jobes claims, you can call disaster hotlines and use resources, these types of as the Stanley-Brown protection system, and share these with your teen, offering them some company around what appears to be helpful to them. Some of the aid Jobes encourages exploring, when waiting to meet up with with a specialist, includes the crisis text line, the nationwide hotline 988, checking out Dialectical Conduct Remedy — an evidence-dependent method to treating suicidal inner thoughts — articles on Now Issues Now or DBT-RU, or becoming a member of the Lived Experience Academy or the peer-led Possibilities to Suicide. Undoubtedly consider precautions and take away access to any deadly means.

Despite conventional wisdom, when the chance of suicide is not imminent, there may not be a have to have for medications these as SSRIs, or hospitalizations. Instead, Jobes encourages comprehending the drivers that are creating your kid look at suicide and supplying your little one a variety of solutions, which include psychotherapies identified to lower danger of suicide, such as Dialectical Conduct Remedy, to specifically offer with problems that fuel suicidal feelings. Soon after a long time of experience in the subject of adolescent suicidology, Jobes has noticed that “what’s at the heart of most suicidal struggles are relational problems.” These can consist of anything from problems at household to university bullying to romantic breakups, and medications or hospitalizations frequently never meaningfully increase people issues as considerably as very good psychotherapy, Jobes says.

Just one of the research in suicide prevention that I normally consider about in my do the job, is psychiatrist Jerome Motto’s simple but lifesaving obtaining that clinicians sending temporary, caring examine-in messages that demonstrate someone is invested in a person’s properly-staying can significantly lower suicide danger. Communicating that you genuinely treatment and are there, frequently, and with out judgment, is a profound reward.

No matter what the young grownup you appreciate is struggling with, contemplate your purpose, as Jobes prescribes, “Like a lighthouse, just hold sending the message, I’m below. There are rocks out there. I will continue to ship out a beacon of mild to assistance guideline you, but you are the captain of your individual ship, and with each other we can get you securely to the shore.”

Jenny Taitz, PsyD, ABPP, is a clinical psychologist and an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at the College of California at Los Angeles. She is the writer of a forthcoming e book on worry, “How to be Single and Happy,” and “Finish Emotional Taking in.”

Sign up for the Perfectly+Becoming newsletter, your supply of pro information and uncomplicated suggestions to aid you live perfectly every single day

We welcome your remarks on this column at OnYourMind@washpost.com.

November 19, 2022

FDA’s ongoing analysis finds toxic arsenic, lead in certain baby foods — tips for parents to limit exposure

How to limit babies’ exposure to toxic heavy metals

Some popular baby foods have higher levels of toxic heavy metals than others. Charlotte Brody, the national director of Healthy Babies Bright Futures, discusses how parents can limit their children’s exposure.

WASHINGTON – Ongoing food monitoring by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of toxic heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury revealed some concerning levels in the U.S. food supply — with certain baby foods having the most detectable levels of arsenic and lead.

Such heavy metals can negatively affect a baby’s brain development and are among the most common metals that get into food, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

These heavy metals are found naturally in the Earth’s crust and are also released into the environment as pollution that gets into the water and soil used to grow food, according to the AAP. The toxins can also get into food from food manufacturing and packaging.

Exposure from all sources “should be minimized,” the AAP states.

The FDA’s Total Diet Study Report, released on July 15, summarizes the findings after sampling over 3,200 food and beverage products between the fiscal years 2018 through 2020. It found that almost one-third (32{35112b74ca1a6bc4decb6697edde3f9edcc1b44915f2ccb9995df8df6b4364bc}) of the foods tested contained toxic elements lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury.

Of all the foods tested, the highest levels of lead were found to be in baby food sweet potatoes and teething biscuits, in addition to sandwich cookies and white wine.

Roughly 51{35112b74ca1a6bc4decb6697edde3f9edcc1b44915f2ccb9995df8df6b4364bc} of the baby food samples analyzed had detectable levels of “total arsenic” found in infant cereals and snacks like teething biscuits and puffed snacks.

Arsenic is a naturally occurring element. Inorganic forms of arsenic are dangerous and associated with more severe health effects than organic arsenic, although the toxicity of organic arsenic is also being actively studied, the FDA notes.

Foods with the highest levels of inorganic arsenic noted in the report were foods babies and children eat, including crisped rice cereal, baby food rice cereal, puffed snacks, white rice, and baby food mixed multi-grain cereal.

Six baby foods containing rice and/or juice “exceeded” the specific level of total arsenic and were being further analyzed to determine the levels of the dangerous inorganic arsenic.

Rice is often served to infants in the form of infant rice cereal, which is the most commonly consumed infant instant cereal in the U.S., according to the FDA.

Canned tuna had the highest concentrations of mercury, followed by baked cod and baked salmon, the report noted.

FILE IMAGE – A 9-month-old baby girl at meal time. (Photo by Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)

The FDA’s recent report is part of its ongoing Closer to Zero action plan to reduce exposure to arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury from foods eaten by babies and young children. This young age group was prioritized because “their smaller body sizes and metabolism make them more vulnerable to the harmful effects of these contaminants,” the FDA says on its website.

The Closer to Zero action plan came after a 2019 study by Healthy Babies Bright Futures, an alliance of nonprofits, scientists, and donors aimed at reducing babies’ exposure to toxic chemicals. The study found that 95{35112b74ca1a6bc4decb6697edde3f9edcc1b44915f2ccb9995df8df6b4364bc} of baby foods tested contained one or more toxic heavy metals, which led to the early 2021 Congressional report showing dangerous levels of heavy metals in several top baby food brands.

U.S. congressional investigators requested internal documents and test results from seven of the largest manufacturers of baby food in the U.S. and found that many top baby foods carried dangerous levels of inorganic arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury.

The FDA’s Closer to Zero action plan was announced in April 2021 to drive down levels of heavy metals in food. Charlotte Brody, the national director of Healthy Babies Bright Futures, noted how there has been some progress, but more needs to be done.

“The few steps that have been taken, when the FDA has acted, the levels do drop,” Brody said, noting how inorganic arsenic levels in infant rice cereal have dropped in recent years. “They need to be acting quicker and more strongly to keep those levels going down.”

What are the standards for toxic heavy metals in baby foods?

“We recognize that Americans want zero toxic elements in the foods eaten by their babies and young children. In reality, because these elements occur in our air, water and soil, there are limits to how low these levels can be,” the FDA says on its website.

Therefore, the FDA’s goal is to reduce the levels of arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury in baby foods to “the greatest extent possible.”

“We are also sensitive to the fact that requiring levels that are not currently feasible could result in significant reductions in the availability of nutritious, affordable foods that many families rely on for their children,” the agency adds.

As a result, the Closer to Zero action plan is a multi-phase approach to achieving this goal over time. It is evaluating the scientific basis for “action levels” or standards for toxic metals in various baby foods, as well as other foods commonly eaten by young children. These proposals and finalized decisions are expected to happen through at least 2024.

To date, the FDA has set action levels for lead in apple juice (10 parts per billion, or ppb) and in chocolate and hard candy (100 ppb). It has also set a standard for inorganic arsenic in apple juice (10 ppb) and infant rice cereal (100 ppb).

Additionally, it has established bottled water standards: 5 ppb for lead, 10 ppb for arsenic, 5 ppb for cadmium,and 2 ppb for mercury.

Healthy Babies Bright Futures and other food safety advocates have called on the agency to act quicker in establishing these stands across baby food categories. Brody questioned why bottled water has stronger protection limits than apple juice and infant rice cereal, commonly served to more vulnerable, younger children.

The FDA said in a statement to FOX Television Stations that the agency’s action levels for toxic metals reflect levels at which it “may regard the food as adulterated.”

“Our consideration of appropriate action levels may take into account various factors, including whether they may result in reductions in exposure to toxic elements and whether the action levels are achievable,” the FDA said in the statement. “To the extent that you are comparing water and apple juice, it is important to realize that consumption of water is greater than apple juice. Additionally, it is important to realize that processors can take steps to reduce lead in bottled water more easily than apple juice.”

The FDA’s Closer to Zero timeline aimed to have proposed lead draft action levels for categories of foods consumed by babies and young children by April 2022. While these standards were indeed proposed for apple juice (as well as chocolate and hard candy), no other lead action levels on baby foods have been proposed.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has led a coalition of several state attorneys general calling on the FDA to speed up the plan’s timeline. James called the delay on lead action levels for baby foods “both a public health concern and a matter of environmental justice,” noting how low-income children and children of color are disproportionately impacted by lead.

In its own response, the FDA said it is “actively working” on draft action level guidance for lead in these foods.

“The FDA is committed to moving as quickly as possible,” the agency told FOX Television Stations. “The Agency is on track to fulfill the commitments in the FDA’s ‘Closer to Zero’ plan and met our first-year goals. In April, we issued the proposed action levels for lead in juices. In addition, we are actively working on guidance for an action level for arsenic in apple juice and draft action level guidance for lead in foods marketed for infants and young children.”

Toxic chemicals called PFAS found in half of US cosmetics tested

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame tested more than 230 commonly-used cosmetics from top brands.

‘No requirement to test the finished product’

In issuing its guidance for standards of lead in juice (10 ppb for apple juice, 20 ppb for other fruit and vegetable juices), the FDA noted that even low lead exposure can harm children’s health and development — specifically the brain and nervous system.

But the agency also said it’s committed to setting standards to the “extent feasible” by the juice industry.

“Though not binding, these action levels are intended to encourage manufacturers to maintain lead levels in juices below the action levels, thus reducing risks associated with dietary lead exposures,” the FDA states on its website.

For Brody and other advocates, concern continues to grow for other baby food categories awaiting agency standards on lead and other toxic metals. And again, these standards are not binding but rather recommendations from the FDA for manufacturers.

“There’s no level, there’s no illegality to having an enormous amount of lead in sweet potatoes. That’s not one of the foods that are regulated at the present time,” Brody noted.

She added: “There’s no requirement now that you actually test the finished product. There should be.”

The 2021 Congressional report found that most baby food manufacturers did not test their finished products at all. Instead, they tested only individual ingredients and used those results to estimate the toxic heavy metal levels in their finished products.

After the 2021 congressional report, the Baby Food Safety Act of 2021 was also introduced by Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Il.), which would establish the maximum levels allowed of inorganic arsenic, mercury, lead, and cadmium in baby food and increase monitoring and enforcement of those levels.

The bill would require facilities that manufacture, process, pack or hold infant and toddler food to have certain controls and plans to ensure that their food complies with the toxic metal limits, including finished product testing, and make results from these tests publicly available.

In addition, the bill would expand the FDA’s authority to require a recall of adulterated or misbranded food to include infant and toddler food that exceeds limits on toxic elements, among other changes.

The Baby Food Safety Act was introduced in the House in March 2021 but has stalled.

How to limit heavy metals in baby foods

FILE IMAGE – A toddler walks along a path in nature. (Photo by Lisa Wiltse/Corbis via Getty Images)

Some popular baby foods have higher levels of toxic heavy metals than others, like rice-based snacks, juice, and sweet potatoes.

Rice is a leading source of arsenic exposure for young children, the Healthy Babies Bright Futures guidance states. Instead, parents can serve other grains like oats, wheat, and barley to help cut their family’s exposure.

Cooking rice in extra water that is poured off before eating can cut down arsenic levels by as much as 60{35112b74ca1a6bc4decb6697edde3f9edcc1b44915f2ccb9995df8df6b4364bc}, according to FDA studies. Basmati rice grown in California, India and Pakistan has been found to have the lowest levels of arsenic, and white rice has less arsenic than brown rice, Healthy Babies Bright Futures guidance states.

“There are some foods that just have less heavy metals than others, and relying more on those foods is a better option,” Brody said, noting how Healthy Babies Bright Futures offers shopping guides on safe products for parents online.

“Shopping organic doesn’t address heavy metals,” Brody added.

Infant rice cereal is the No. 1 source of arsenic in infant diets, Healthy Babies Bright Futures says in its guidance. Parents are encouraged to choose other cereals like oatmeal and multi-grain.

Instead of teething biscuits and rice rusks, parents can opt for items like frozen bananas, peeled and chilled cucumbers, a clean, cold wet washcloth, or a spoon, while always monitoring for choking.

“Some grains, some fruits, and vegetables pull up more heavy metals than others. So a banana is a better choice of a teething snack, especially if it’s frozen, than a teething biscuit,” Brody said. “I would say a variety matters… mix it up, and be especially careful about the most contaminated foods.”

“We also actually need the government to take care of this problem for us,” she continued. “Closer to Zero is a very promising program. It needs to live up to its promise and make this one less thing that parents need to worry about.”

This story was reported from Cincinnati.

July 21, 2022

When a parent’s mental health struggle affects their kids

July 21, 2022 at 10:28 a.m. EDT

Eileen Grimes, right, helps her daughter climb a tree at Grant Park in Spokane, Wash. (Young Kwak/For The Washington Post)

Comment

Eileen Grimes was sitting on the examination table, already feeling rather exposed in a thin paper gown as she waited to begin a routine appointment with her OB/GYN last August. Then the doctor walked in, looked Grimes in the eyes and gently asked with genuine concern: “How are you doing?”

Grimes, a married mother of two in Spokane, Wash., had spent the previous months caring for her husband through a recent addiction relapse, working a full-time job in IT and attempting to launch a new career as an author and entrepreneur, all while trying to keep her young children safe in the pandemic. Her 4-year-old daughter had grown increasingly clingy recently, often wanting to be held and comforted. Grimes’s 7-year-old son had started asking her what was wrong — are you mad at me? — and she knew that even though she’d been trying to shield her children from her own stress and anxiety, it wasn’t working.

All of this flooded her mind as she sat in the exam room, and Grimes suddenly found herself sobbing. “The floodgates just opened,” she recalls. “There was the stress of the pandemic, and not knowing the right thing to do with my kids, and my husband was struggling with his own mental health, and I felt like I was supposed to hold everything together.”

For the first time in her life, Grimes, 38, left her doctor’s office with a prescription for Prozac — a choice she made not only for herself, she says, but also for the sake of her kids.

The pandemic’s profound toll on the mental wellbeing of children has been well documented — especially by parents, teachers, pediatricians, counselors and psychologists who have witnessed the impact firsthand. Suicide has become a leading cause of death for children ages 10 and up, and mental health problems were responsible for a surge of children’s visits to hospital emergency rooms during the first months of the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But many kids are not grappling in a vacuum with life-altering changes to school, community and routine wrought by the coronavirus. Their families, too, have struggled — sometimes limiting the children’s ability to cope, or even amplifying the emotional impact on all members of a household. Meanwhile, demand for mental health resources has soared since 2020 even as the availability of therapy and other support, especially for families who are most vulnerable and in need, has plummeted.

Researchers like Jessica Borelli, a clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychological science at the University of California at Irvine, are trying to decipher exactly what all of this means for parents and children who are carrying the trauma of the past two years. In her work so far, which has included a national survey of parents conducted in the first few months of the pandemic, she has found that parents who reported higher levels of mental health symptoms often had children who were experiencing the same: “The more covid impacted parents’ lives, the more a parent’s mental health was adversely affected,” she says, “which in turn impacted their children’s mental health.”

Schools are struggling to meet rising mental health needs, data shows

Grimes had seen this pattern taking shape in her own household. In the weeks before her doctor’s appointment, she had noticed her son assuming a protective posture around her — if his little sister started throwing a tantrum, he would step in and try to intervene, behaving almost as a surrogate parent.

“That broke my heart and triggered something in me. I don’t want him to feel like he has to be another parent,” Grimes says. “It was a red flag. I knew I had to do something.”

The fact that so many parents and children are experiencing mental health crises right now is not surprising, Borelli says; the societal tumult of recent years has forced many families into impossible situations.

“Parents are not meant to meet all of a child’s needs, and when we are all of a sudden in a situation where parents need to meet all of their children’s needs — their social-emotional needs, their educational needs, their physical health and exercise needs, their nutritional needs, everything — the system cannot survive,” she says.

Her study was conducted in the early days of the pandemic, and much has changed since then. Schools, camps and day cares are largely available again, she notes. But parents are still facing extraordinary instability — unpredictable schedules, unexpected quarantines, shifting rules about masking and testing, children who are struggling to re-adjust to in-person schooling — and these constant fluctuations are mentally and emotionally taxing.

“We are asking so much of our kids, and we’re asking so much of our parents,” Borelli says. “The number of routines that children have had to transition between is just staggering, and parents are the ones who have to do that transitioning. It’s just a tremendous cognitive and emotional load.”

As a parent and an elementary school teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools, Samantha Altmann, 38, knows this better than most. When the lockdown began in March 2020, Samantha was teaching her third-grade students online, and her husband, Eben Altmann, was running a commercial kitchen for local food businesses. They had to balance those obligations with childcare for their then-2-year-old daughter, Mabel. Samantha, who was nearly four months pregnant at the time, soon learned that she could longer bring Eben with her to prenatal appointments.

This meant that she was alone when a grim-faced doctor told her, at 25 weeks pregnant, that their son no longer had a heartbeat. And she was alone as she underwent a subsequent dilation and evacuation procedure.

“Five days later, I was in front of my computer virtually teaching my students again,” she says. She felt she had to be there for them — she was a trusted presence in their lives amid so much upheaval, and her students were still reeling from the murder of George Floyd, and she wanted to support them, she says. “So in the middle of me losing the baby, and talking about what’s going on in the country and George Floyd — we’re talking about this virtually, with parents in the background, who are really engaged and wanting to contribute — I’m sitting here in my own trauma, with my daughter on my lap, and that was the start of the pandemic for me.”

When she became pregnant again a few months later, the doctor expressed concern about protecting Samantha’s mental health during another pregnancy — and wrote her an antidepressant prescription. Throughout the pregnancy, Samantha says she was dogged by constant fear of the worst happening again, until their son, Gus, arrived safely in March 2021.

How much of this experience did Mabel absorb? Her parents aren’t certain. “She’s just transitioned into the next age group at school, she’s changed classrooms, she’s left some of her friends behind. Sam’s grandmother recently passed away, and Mabel was very close to her,” Eben says. So when Mabel, now 4 years old, has a tantrum or struggles to listen or behave, there are many possible explanations, he says — “or it could be that she’s picking something up from our own issues and anxieties related to the pandemic.”

For Kim Alexander, 44, serving as director of an assisted living facility in Houston put her on the pandemic’s front lines, and she became fixated on making sure that she did not bring the virus home, where two of her adult children, her teenage son and her then-5-year-old granddaughter lived.

Teen suicides are increasing at an alarming pace

She was especially worried about her 13-year-old son, A. Jay, who has a chronic disorder called eosinophilic esophagitis that has resulted in 48 surgeries since his birth. The condition has led him to experience both depression and post-traumatic stress.

“One day I realized that I was no longer hugging my kids,” she said. “I was keeping myself away from them, which then made them feel more isolated, separate and apart from everybody else. The hurt for me was seeing their hurt, seeing how frustrated they were.”

The toll of isolation, virtual learning and the difficult return to in-person high school exacerbated her son’s anxiety and anger, Alexander says — and when he started running away from home several months ago, she was terrified. “It got to the point for us where I was scared to leave the house, because I didn’t know if when I got home he would still be here.”

Now 16, A. Jay longs to be seen as a “typical” kid, she says, which creates tension between them when she advocates on his behalf and pursues the accommodations he requires. “I’m doing what he needs and not what he wants,” she says. “I’ve become the parent who has put all of these things in place to try to safety-net him from a world that doesn’t want him. And now I’ve made him feel special, I’ve made him feel like he is the center of attention, and his anger with me is ‘I just want to be left alone.’”

All of this weighs on her heavily, she adds: “I’m mentally exhausted. I really am.”

When parents turn to her for help, Jessica Borelli says, she tries to emphasize one thing above all: That a strong parent-child relationship can help shield children from the damaging impact of a parent’s mental health issues. It is a pattern she has consistently observed in her own research, across a range of cultural and socio-economic groups. The strongest predictor of a child’s mental health, she says, is “attachment security” — the feeling of having an open relationship between parent and child, even if one party is battling depression or anxiety or post-traumatic stress.

“Do your kids feel safe? Do they feel loved? Do they feel accepted by you?” If the answers are yes, then that’s what matters, she says. “This isn’t necessarily a time to excel, it’s a time to survive. Focus on the connection that you have with your child.”

Hidden by isolation, schoolchildren struggled with mental health

For Eileen Grimes, that means being transparent. When she filled her first prescription for Prozac, she immediately told her children about the medication.

“I told them, ‘This is what Mommy’s taking, and there’s nothing wrong with it, it helps me to do what I need to do and be the mom I need to be for you,’” she says. “I want to normalize talking about this stuff. I don’t want mental health stigma to exist for them. And I want my kids to know they can come to me when life gets hard.”

Since April, Kim Alexander’s son A. Jay has lived with his father, Alexander’s ex-husband, in a nearby neighborhood. Alexander’s relationship with her youngest child has been strained by all they’ve endured, she says, but she hopes this distance might create a reset of sorts, and she has faith in the strength of their bond. “I’ve been a parent for 28 years, and I know there are ebbs and flows of parenting,” she says. “I’m not concerned about our relationship not being repaired. He will get there. I just want him to find his joy.”

For now, the temporary separation has helped her own anxiety level come down, and she knows that much is essential for both of them. “Honestly, I am relieved,” she says. “As a parent, you’ve got to put your own oxygen mask on first.”