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On Teens with Mental Health Issues
In third grade, Jacob’s New Year’s resolution was to make people laugh. He was always my goofy, carefree baby, laughing and playing all the time. He grew to love making games on Roblox and Minecraft and was making money, albeit in small amounts, from his games at the age of 11. He has an eye for art and design and taught himself to make 3-D animations and landscapes for his games. He knows more about coding than most adults, and he wants to go to college for computer science so he can design and create games.
It may have also been around third grade when he started having nightly panic attacks. He’d be in bed and call for me while his father and I watched a show. At first, it was easy to help him feel better, but as he got older, it gradually worsened.
He’d worry about a test he had the next day or the homework he didn’t get done. He thought about all the ways the presentation he was supposed to give the next day could go wrong. He thought about friends and family and COVID and life. All these thoughts would rush in when he’d turn off his games, brush his teeth, and turn off the lights for bed.
Jacob always had friends either online or in real life. He enjoyed hanging out at the park, walking around the neighborhood, and going on adventures in the woods with his best friends. What he didn’t like was going to the store or going out to…
