Can your teen recover from mental illness?

While there isn't really a “cure” for mental illness yet, people can and do get better with help and treatment.

Most people now believe that in order to successfully deal with and recover from mental illness, you have to take into account several things, including:

Biological influences:
general health and medical treatment

Psychosocial influences:
a person’s outlook, their friends and family,

Socioeconomic influences:
income, employment, and housing.

Because all of these different influences play an important role in helping people get over mental illness, it’s important that everyone has access to:

1) appropriate medical and other forms of treatment, including psychosocial intervention, psychoeducation

2) support from people like friends and family

3) enough income, a decent place to live, and something meaningful to do.

Some people will just get ill once, but others will be at risk of repeated episodes, or even chronic illness. Today many people who have been diagnosed with a mental illness talk about how they have been able to put the illness in perspective and get on with their life. Although some symptoms may remain at times, this experience of "recovery" brings new hope to teens who are experiencing mental illness for the first time.