Mental health and its struggles are no joke. Even though quite a lot of mentally ill people like to joke about it, it's merely their coping mechanism - dealing with it is no child's play. Even though children can suffer from it.
Just like this teenage girl, who feels so mentally ill that she has issues fulfilling even the most mundane tasks like cleaning her room or going to sleep at a reasonable hour. And so, her parents, seeing her struggle, came up with a "solution" that only made things worse.
More info: Reddit
Mental health is no joke and sometimes all it takes to make it at least a tad batter is support from the people around you
Image credits: Kübra Arslaner / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Sadly, in this story, the struggling girl didn't get that much support from her parents
Image credits: Slaapwijsheid.nl / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
It wasn't like her parents were not doing anything - they were just doing the wrong thing
Image credits: Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Basically, they decided that to fix the daughter's messed up sleep schedule, they would take away her mattress early in the morning
Image credits: RoryGirl7
This frustrated the teen, as her parents' "creative" solution only made her problems worse
The OP is an 18-year-old who lives at home while going to a local community college. The thing is that she struggles really badly with her mental health – she has a few diagnosed disorders, takes medicine, supplements, and sees both a counselor and a therapist. Basically, she is doing a lot to improve her mental state.
Yet, she still struggles. Her room is unclean, her grades are low, she's failing some classes, she stays up late, and then sleeps in. All of this combined makes the parents view their daughter as a lazy person.
So, to "motivate" her to not be the one, they came up with an idea - taking away her mattress. They come in early in the morning to take it, along with blankets, pillows, and such. Then, they return it only in the evening, around the time she should be going to sleep in their eyes.
This really bothers the girl, knowing that she goes to sleep late, but losing her mattress in the early hours is frustrating. She tried talking to her parents, even giving them different kinds of “punishment” ideas, but they didn’t take it. Granted, they stopped taking it for a while after the girl talked to them, but kept the threat of it over her head.
There will be no surprise when we say that what these parents are doing isn’t the best way to help their mentally ill child. Yes, dealing with mental health struggles such as depression isn’t a piece of cake; that’s no secret. Whether it’s something you have to do for yourself or see someone you care about doing, it’s just not easy.
Image credits: Basit Abdul / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
When it comes to parents witnessing their kid being like that, there are certain things they can do to ease their affliction. For example, seemingly common sense (that isn’t so common to some) things like letting a child know they are there for them, talking to them, recognizing their feelings, and finding what kind of outside help they need.
But some parents don’t even understand that depression in teens is more than just a bad mood. It’s said that among 10-19-year-olds, an age group the OP falls into, one in seven experience this disorder. So, it’s rather common, and is still quite misunderstood.
The parents from today’s story seem among those who don’t fully understand it, since their punishment method proves to be unwarranted. We don’t say that punishment is always bad – if done in a non-harmful, but disciplined way, it can be useful, but not in this case.
In this case, the parents only hurt their daughter. It might not be corporal punishment, but it is a psychological one for sure. In fact, it’s proven that any type of punishment, especially an unwarranted one, can contribute to one’s depression, so here it would only make things worse. As netizens pointed out, looking for the underlying issues why the girl’s state is so bad would be a much better option than doing anything like that.
What do you think of the parents' solution to their daughter's problems? Please share all your thoughts in the comments.
Netizens said that instead of doing all of this, parents should look into the underlying reasons why their daughter's state is like that
