May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Each week, Timothy Schmutte — a Westport resident, clinical psychologist and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine — and his wife Elenee Argentinis will address a different mental health issue that impacts Westporters.
This week, they focus on how to recognize situations when adolescents may need help. Names and details have been modified, to protect privacy. Timothy and Elenee write:
“Max” was a forward on the high school rugby team. A collision with another player caused a concussion, which took several weeks to resolve.
After being cleared by his doctor to return to playing, Max enjoyed practices. But the night before games he complained of an upset stomach, headache, or other symptoms to avoid playing. His symptoms “magically” disappeared when friends called to get together.
“Sarah” started sophomore year at a Westport private school. Most students already had established friendships. She found it hard to make connections. At her prior school she was a theater star, but now she did not get a leading role. Her grades were notably lower than at her prior school. When her parents asked about her day, she gave short responses like “fine” or “O.K.” She seemed withdrawn, and had secretly started cutting herself to deal with her suffering.
“Axel” had played baseball since age 7. He’d managed his ADHD successfully with medications, but high school brought new challenges. Several boys on the team smoked carts (vaping marijuana), which he used to fit in. Many had also gotten fake IDs, and used them at bars in Norwalk. High school was proving to be a big step up in academic demands. Axel found that vaping and drinking provided a convenient escape from the stress.
What’s common to these vignettes? Before high school, these teens were on successful paths. But high school and teen life came with new challenges, complexity, and adversity that they did not have the tools to cope with alone.
Being a teenager today is arguably harder than it’s ever been. Last week, we mentioned some key statistics worth repeating. The 2025 Connecticut School Health Survey found that in the previous 30 days, 21% of high schoolers reported that their mental health was “not good,” either always or most of the time. One- third of high school students reported feeling sad or hopeless almost daily for at least 2 weeks in a row, to the extent that they stopped doing activities. Staples seniors’ use of alcohol is, on average, 10 percentage points higher than the national average.
So, we still have work to do to help equip Westport teens with the tools to deal with the challenges of their generation.
It starts with shifting our own beliefs about mental health. For prior generations, seeing a therapist was usually reserved for times of crisis. Rather than wait for a breaking point, if parents can identify early signs of challenges and reach out for help, it may help many teens avert a mental health crisis.
How can you tell a teen needs help? Like many things, it depends. It starts with having a good sense of your teen’s baseline (normal everyday) behavior, so you can gauge changes in frequency, intensity, and duration of behaviors.
- Communication: Changes in a teen’s depth and specificity of information shared is important. So are changes in the topics they mention (for example, negative views of self, life, social circle, appearance etc.,).
- Mood: Frequent anger, testiness and stonewalling are strong signals that something is wrong.
- Sleep: Changes in sleep (oversleeping, hyperactivity or excessive daytime fatigue).
- Friends: Social withdrawal or abrupt changes to their friend group are especially important at this age.
- Weight and diet: Noticeable weight gain or loss can be a sign of depression, eating disorders and other problems.
- Screen time: 4 or more hours of daily screen time are strongly associated with teen depression, anxiety and behavior problems. If time online has increased (or teens resist parental time limits), this is important.
If something feels off, trust your instincts.
Reaching out for help can feel daunting. Picking up the phone to call a therapist can feel like an admission of failure or fault. But that notion is part of an old paradigm we should leave behind. When a child shows symptoms of physical illness such as a sore throat, ear pain or fever, we know when to call a doctor.
The same should be true for mental health. If we can flip our internal script about what it means to get mental health support, together we can bend the curve on teen mental health.
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have a monitoring system worked into the schools