For a long time, Stacy was worried her 12-year-old son, Jay, would be removed from her home. Despite Jay being very social, active among his peer group and good at engaging with other kids his age, he was often physically aggressive at home, struggled with substance use, general delinquency and was destroying items in his home.
Creativity is important. Simply engaging in creative activities can boost your mental health and a new survey from APA finds about 46% of Americans use creative activities to relieve stress or anxiety, such as playing the piano, crocheting a blanket, dancing with friends or solving crossword puzzles.
Teenagers can create challenging moments for many parents. Those trying moments can be even greater for a single parent who loves and provides for their children but is stretched by work and other demands.
Her 13-year-old daughter was already involved in the juvenile court system, was skipping school and the single-mother from Peabody feared her daughter could end up in prison. But she didn’t know where to turn.
Youth Villages has offered services in Massachusetts since 2007 and in 2010, expanded into New Hampshire. I’ve worked for Youth Villages for six years and, in that time, I’ve held multiple roles. I started as a family intervention specialist and transitioned to a regional supervisor.
Having children is a life-changing experience, and most parents will admit you’re never ready until you become one. There is certainly not a universal manual on how to parent, and at the end of the day, most parents want to raise their children the best way they know how.
At Youth Villages, we believe children are raised best at home. However, some families need extra support to unload those extra stressors off their shoulders and learn tools to ease some of that weight.
When working with children experiencing behavioral and mental health challenges, a little creativity goes a long way. And for Intercept specialist Noah Galiffi-Caster, making a connection with the young people he works with is often a key to success.
When Haley was brought to the emergency department in October, she was one of 115 children and teenagers who went to a hospital emergency room in a mental health crisis and got stuck there.
The lack of mental health resources has become a crisis across the country, especially in Massachusetts. On any given day in Massachusetts, there are over 100 children boarding in hospital emergency departments (EDs) because there are no psychiatric beds available.