Taking care of young people’s mental health

Charleswood

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/03/2026 (206 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how social media impacts the mental health of children. After attending a lecture called Coping, connecting and caring: developing positive mental health in young and old, at Charleswood United Church, I gained a better understanding of how mobile phone use (as part of the overall social media package) contributes to problems many young people are dealing with today, and also a path parents can follow to help children suffering from various forms of anxiety.

Guest speaker Dr. Mark Koltek, a psychiatrist with Shared Health, said there is a mental health crisis among young people today. Emergency service calls for children have doubled in the past 10 years, he said, and it’s likely not a coincidence that these stats align with proliferation of social media.

The mental health crisis is due, in part, to a lack of resiliency and coping skills, Koltek said. Resiliency is coping with what one encounters in day-to-day life and involves developing skills to work out problems – skills usually developed through social relationships. Koltek attributes the lack of resiliency missing in youth to a lack of personal interaction and society’s addiction to mobile phones and social media.

Children today don’t have the same face-to-face interactions they did in past, he said. This can result in missed non-verbal communication cues, such as facial expression and tone of voice, which can lead to misunderstanding, then to anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, and even self-harm.

Parent can help children who are feeling these kinds of emotions by making them feel safe and reassuring them. When things go wrong, children need to have the internal knowledge that they will be OK. They need to see empathy in parents faces, he said.

If attempts at nurturing good mental health aren’t working, there are measures parents can take, Koltek said. The state of a child’s mental health will determine whether an intervention such as cognitive therapy, medication, or both are required. The relationship between the two will depend on the level of suffering, and whether the severity of suffering is causing the child to become dysfunctional. Sometimes medication is required to allow therapeutic changes. Therapy and medication work together, he says, and either or both may not be needed forever. They can also be used until a pathway is found to something better — where the child is relaxed and engaged as opposed to stressed and depressed. Positive mental health is a process. Like exercise, you must work at it to get results.

Implementing habits that support good mental health are an important tool, Koltek said. They include: good sleep; healthy diet; lots of exercise, and singing. (Singing because it releases stress – just like yawning.)

These recommendations can also apply to adults of all ages.

How we think is how we feel, he says, adding that if we can understand that premise, we can make changes that improve our well-being. Better mental health for “young and old” could be as simple as spending less time on phones and social media, and more time in face-to-face relationships. Those who try may find they feel better, become more resilient and able to cope with life’s ups and downs.