Trails Carolina Blog

In a new review, published in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers examined more than 36 studies about the adverse effects of cyberbullying on teen mental health. What they found was a strong link between those cyber-bullied and teen depression. They also found that most cyberbullying instances happened through Facebook, a common social media site. This emphasizes the need…

For most teens, traditional cigarettes are going the way of the dinosaurs. However, a new trend has arisen in teen smoking: e-cigarettes and hookah. The rise of the e-cigarette Between 2011 and 2014, the traditional cigarette has declined in teen smoking popularity from 16 percent to 9 percent. In order to quit, many teens are…

Butterflies. Not the beautiful ones that float effortlessly throughout the warm, summer air, but the ones that flutter in your stomach before something nerve wracking, such as a date or an award ceremony. That iggly-wiggly feeling in your stomach is a product of normal, mild anxiety known as nervousness.  Social anxiety disorder: not butterfly wings, but bee stings…

“I don’t want to go to school! You can’t make me!” These are all too familiar words for most parents who have children who dislike school or don’t want to go for other reasons. For some, the issue of school refusal can be solved by getting teens involved in extracurricular activities that they are passionate…

Food, water and shelter: before all else, these are our most basic human needs. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (visual diagram located to the left), without this foundation of physical safety and wellness, we cannot progress and gain mental, emotional and social health. For teen mental health, all of these needs are truly essential.…

Everyone knows that keeping yourself physically fit requires a certain amount of weekly exercise, but what about keeping yourself mentally fit? Exercise has been proven to improve general mental and physical wellness, yet not many people are aware of this. Teen mental health and exercise are interwoven, meaning that it’s important to motivate your child…

In current times it seems as though everyone is behind a piece of technology. From cell phones, to tablets, to laptops and more, it has almost become more common to walk into a room and see screens instead of faces. If you were to introduce these devices to a crowded room of talkative teenagers, the…

If your struggling teen is having behavioral problems, or is going through any kind of struggle it’s important to confront the issue at hand. As a parent, it’s your responsibility to take care of your child – but sometimes that can be a near impossible task. Below are some tips to manage your struggling teen:…

When parents divorce, home life can become tumultuous, strange and extremely difficult to deal with, especially for teenagers who feel as if they have lost their sense of “family” while having to balancing the personal, social and academic aspects of their lives. Dealing with divorced parents can drastically change a teen’s mental health and social…

New research published in the American Journal of Public Health compared high school drug policies in Washington State to those in Victoria, Australia. While high schools across America take a firm zero-tolerance approach to teen drug use, Australia opts for less extreme approaches. Teen drug users who were caught in Washington schools were twice as…