Mental illness is preventable and treatable!

Here’s what else I learned in the course of writing my new book, A Lethal Inheritance, due out in January 2012, about how parents can safeguard a child’s mental health.

1. Chart a “tree” of your family mental health history going back three generations, and record all known or suspected mental disorders and addictions.

If relatives balk at your digging into the past, point out that it’s for the safety of your children and future grandchildren. Use the U.S. Surgeon General’s online form for recording and storing your family mental health (and medical) history. Give it to your pediatrician or mental health practitioner.

You might be surprised to learn that seasonal affective disorder (SAD) doesn’t affect just adults. It affects kids and teens, too.

SAD is more than a case of the winter blues. It’s a seasonal form of clinical depression.

According to author and SAD specialist Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., in his book Winter Blues: Everything You Need to Know to Beat Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD affects about 3 percent of kids ages 9 to 17.

Below you’ll learn what SAD looks like in kids and teens along with how parents can help.

The holidays are fast approaching, as the barrage of advertising reminds us. With them come the usual dose of family stress over gatherings, family relationships, reconnecting with friends, travel and trying to find some meaning in it all.

To help you better cope with the holidays and find new ways to handle potential volatile family situations, we’re pleased to introduce our next e-book: Tending the Family Heart Through the Holidays, by long-time contributor, Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D.

I can’t imagine a more timely resource to help us all deal with this time of the year more effectively and successfully.

And the part I really like — it’s available for only 99 cents.

Angry mother and teenage son image from Shutterstock

“The teen years tend to foster fear: fear that our child will fail, over-experiment, embarrass us [and] become depressed,” according to John Duffy, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist and author of the book The Available Parent: Radical Optimism for Raising Teens and Tweens.

So naturally it’s tough to figure out the best way to navigate such a seemingly tumultuous time. (By the way, the belief that teens are a nightmare is exaggerated. While the years aren’t easy-peasy, Duffy said that they’re rewarding and filled with growth.)

But parenting from a place of fear rarely works. It leads to poor parenting decisions, Duffy said. Below, he shares his insight on outdated approaches, why they don’t work and what does.

1. Lecturing. “Parents still think they can lecture kids into submission, or at the very least compliance,” Duffy said. But it can backfire, because teens may just “blow their parents off.” Lecturing might’ve worked a generation ago, but it doesn’t today, he explained. How come? Today’s teens are “more worldly and savvy.” And “As [teens] grow up more quickly in this media age, they question authority more readily than we did, and require more two-way, respectful communication.”

What if your friend, mother, sibling, or father-in-law is severely depressed but refuses to recognize it?

Most of us have been there at least once in our life: the awkward spot where you know a loved one has a mood disorder or drinking problem, but is too stubborn to admit it and to proud to get help. You might see the consequence his behavior is having on his children, his job, or his marriage, but he is blissfully blind or is in too much pain to see the truth.

What can you do, short of taking the person by his shoulders, shaking him, while screaming, “Wake the hell up and see what you are doing?!?”

It’s very complicated.

Because people are different.

Mood disorders vary.

And families are as unique as the illnesses themselves.

After doing a bit of research and consulting with a few mental health professionals, I have compiled this list of suggestions, to be read as merely that: suggestions.

In addition to writing being my profession, it’s also a prime passion. And it’s a passion that I’d like to pass on to my kids, once I actually have them. But it isn’t because I want my future kids to become writers like me.

It’s because writing is a magical medium. It’s a vehicle for communication, connection and creativity. It’s an opportunity to learn and grow, have fun and sharpen your senses.

Author, educator and literacy expert Pam Allyn agrees. In her book, Your Child’s Writing Life: How to Inspire Confidence, Creativity and Skill at Every Age, she says that kids need to start writing early because writing helps to cultivate emotional growth, develop critical thinking skills and improve school performance.

Being able to express yourself is a “skill and gift. By cultivating this capability in your child, you are giving him the priceless power to share his thoughts and ideas with the world in a meaningful way.”

In her book (which I highly recommend), Allyn provides parents with five keys to inspire their kids to write. The suggestions aptly spell the acronym WRITE: Word Power, Reading Life, Identity, Time and Environment. Here’s a bit on each key to get you started.

Ah, Pediatrics. You publish such ridiculous studies sometimes. We called you out for the flawed study on ‘Facebook depression’, a shoddy study which should have never made it past your reviewers without some serious work.

Now you’re in the news again for a study about SpongeBob SquarePants, the apparently evil cartoon that will turn 4-year-old’s minds into mush after just 9 minutes of viewing. While you also published a somewhat more balanced commentary article alongside the study, nobody seemed to notice it.

And why would they? This study was a siren call to over-generalize and suggest we have found one of the enemies attempting to influence our children. And he wears square pants.

Dr. Keith Ablow, a practicing psychiatrist known as much for his media persona on the Fox News channel and elsewhere as his two New York Times bestsellers, wrote what I thought was a pretty savage, fear-mongering diatribe recently against parents letting their children watch any episode of “Dancing with the Stars” that features a person who has undergone transgender surgery, Chaz Bono.

His logic is a thing of beauty to behold in its twisted triumph: Because some children who may be watching may be undergoing their own self-identity and sexual transformation (as most teenagers do at some point in their normal development), they are “vulnerable:” “The last thing vulnerable children and adolescents need, as they wrestle with the normal process of establishing their identities [... is to watch an adult who's made the choice to change their gender].”

Except that Dr. Ablow says it in an emotionally-charged, vulgar manner so as to transform an immense and difficult decision into something that focuses solely on the physical aspects of a transgendered person’s identity.

I’ve typically come to expect shallow pop psychology from many of our media psychologists and psychiatrists. But somehow, I expected something more… well, thoughtful, from my colleague here in Newburyport.

We all know how easy it is to commit a comment of passion online. That is, it’s all too easy to post something on the Internet that you might late regret — something that might be too much information (TMI) for not only strangers, acquaintances and co-workers, but even friends and family.

And, we hear it all the time, once it’s out there, it’s out there forever. (No pressure, right?)

No group is guiltier of the passionate post than teens, especially when it comes to social media sites like Facebook.

So it was great to see a tip on the American Psychiatric Association’s blog, Healthy Minds, Healthy Lives, to help teens curtail their over-sharing. In this post, Tristan Gorrindo, M.D., a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, offers a quick tool for teens to think before they press publish.

By the way, I think this tip isn’t just relevant for teens; it’s valuable for adults, too, whether you’re blogging, tweeting or leaving a comment on another website. Regardless of age, we’re all susceptible to making quick decisions and letting our emotions do the talking. We all make mistakes.

[If I Could Go Back is a series of articles that center around the college experience. Hindsight is 20/20, and sometimes the best advice we could ever give stems from experiences in our past that make us cringe just the tiniest bit.]

“If I could do it all over again, I’d major in Education.”

“Oh, me too. Either that or Business.”

“I should have majored in Economics. At least then I’d have a real job.”

These are not the words of slackers or lazy, “Generation Me” complainers. Nor is this a made up conversation invented by a conglomerate of strict parents hoping their children will study something safe in college. This dialogue was actually spoken, by real twenty-somethings, all of whom worked hard for good grades and big fellowships, sometime last week.

During a short vacation back to my hometown, I met up with a bunch of old friends. As we all got caught up with each other’s lives, it became shriekingly apparent that there was a trend among the entire group: we all wished we had been more practical in college.

Psych Central is pleased to congratulate Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker, author of our first e-book, Tending the Family Heart on receiving a Gold “Young Voices Foundation Award” in the parenting category. This prestigious award is handed out only once a year, and Dr. Hartwell-Walker was the only winner this year in the parenting category.

The Young Voices Foundation is the sponsor of the Young Voices Foundation Awards, which honors books and media that inspire, mentor and educate young people and their families. Judging is based on content (emphasis on strong family values and suitability for the specified age group), originality, design, and production quality.

The judging panel for the award includes published authors, editors, publishers, educators, young readers, parents, and family counselors.

Good-bye, I’m off for vacation! Right now, I’m in that stage where it feels like so much work to get away, I’d rather just stay home. But I’m sure once we’re underway, I’ll be glad we undertook it.

As I’m getting ready to leave, I’m reminding myself of my Secrets of Adulthood for family vacations.

What are they? Click through to find out! (And then add your own in the comments…)