March 2025

Borderline personality disorder in teens isn’t common, but it is serious.  Studies show that borderline personality disorder (BPD) occurs in about 3% of adolescents. And the impact can be extreme, with BPD appearing in 78% of teens who visit the emergency room for suicidal behaviors.  The Ridge provides qualified residential care for teens and young […]

If you’re a parent wondering how to get a depressed teenager out of bed and off to school, you’re not alone. Depression is a growing concern, particularly among high school students who are facing multiple academic and social pressures. Parents often struggle with how to help their depressed teenager, especially when physically getting out of

When it comes to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), teens are at risk just like adults. While location, age, and environment can all play a role in whether a teen develops SAD, it’s a good idea for all parents and caregivers to be aware of the signs and mental health risks, as well as the possible

Are you struggling with an out of control teen? Parenting a teenager isn’t for the faint of heart, but extreme defiance or other forms of acting out can make things even more complicated. To address the problem, you need to understand the root cause of out-of-control behaviors in teens, as well as effective ways to

When a teenager refuses to go to school, your first response as a parent or caregiver might be to just force them and call it a day. But there are some very real issues that could be at the root of school refusal, including anxiety, depression, or social struggles. A better approach, then, is to

In the world of teen and young adult mental health treatment, it’s not unusual to see teens addicted to social media. In fact, many of the teens who come to The Ridge residential treatment centers struggle with social media addiction in addition to other mental health conditions like depression or anxiety. But how do you

It might sound like a contradiction, but smiling depression is very real and often very difficult to spot – especially in teens.  Also referred to as high-functioning depression, this condition is characterized by depression that is masked by a smiley, happy exterior. Its symptoms are so atypical that teens may be able to effectively hide

A Parents’ Guide to Teen Anxiety and How to Best Support Them When we consider what causes anxiety in teens, we must remember anxiety doesn’t have a single cause—it emerges from a complex interplay of factors affecting mental, physical, and emotional well-being.  Notably, understanding the causes of anxiety in teenagers can give parents and caregivers

We often think of burnout as a condition affecting overworked adults, but teenage burnout is a very real – and sometimes very serious – problem.  Burnout is a state of physical, mental, and/or emotional exhaustion caused by an ongoing stressful situation. For teens, this can be an overloaded schedule, high expectations, or overwhelming social pressure.

If you want to understand teen drug use, you need to understand why teens use drugs in the first place.  The teen years can be a tumultuous time. While not all teens will use drugs to cope, statistics show that 21.3% of 8th graders have tried illicit drugs at least once, and that number jumps