All in the Family

Time to commit to your family’s mental health and wellbeing

By Craig Manning | Dec. 24, 2022

“This year, I’m going to take better care of myself.”

When it comes to setting New Year’s resolutions, many people return to some version of the above statement every December or January. But how about this version?

“This year, we’re all going to take better care of our mental health.”

That focus is one that Sander and Wendy Weckstein are urging everyone to adopt in 2023—especially families with kids and teens. The Wecksteins are two of the most respected mental health professionals in northern Michigan, particularly when it comes to addressing the growing epidemic of mental health challenges in young people.

Sander owns Northern Michigan Psychiatric Services and is a child and adolescent psychiatrist with more than 30 years of practice under his belt in northern Michigan. Wendy is a physical therapist and a certified instructor in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, as well as the director of wellness for Northern Michigan Psychiatric Services. Together, the two are doing their part to foster sound mental health for young people in the Grand Traverse area.

But that work, the two say, has absolutely gotten more difficult in recent years.

A Perfect Storm
“The mental health needs of children and adolescents—and adults—after the pandemic have skyrocketed,” Sander tells Northern Express. “If you talk to any therapist or psychiatrist in the community, they will tell you that it is the busiest it’s ever been for them. I have hospitalized, psychiatrically, more teens in the last few years than I ever had in the past.”

Even before COVID, youth mental health challenges were on the rise in the United States. The Wecksteins point to a whole slew of factors to explain the trend, including social media, excessive screen time, lack of sufficient physical activity, not enough time outdoors, poor nutrition, and a constant cycle of “bad news” headlines, ranging from political division to school shootings to climate catastrophe.

The pandemic put all those stressors into a bottle and shook it up. “You take all the factors that already existed, and then you add the reality of kids not being in school,” Sander says. “They suddenly lost all their structure, and because of that, they were even more sedentary, even more on the internet, and with less and less supervision. It was a perfect storm of multiple events that really negatively impacted their functioning in so many ways. And virtually every evaluation that I see now, I will hear parents and kids going back to something relating to the pandemic being an additional stressor for why they’re here.”

If there’s good news, it’s that the dark cloud of the pandemic receded in a big way over the course of 2021 and 2022, allowing kids and teens to return to something resembling a pre-COVID normal. The structure of school, extracurricular activities, and face-to-face time with friends is back in place.

And yet, even with the worst tidal waves of COVID (hopefully) in the rearview, the Wecksteins say there are still things to worry about when it comes to youth mental health. First, there’s the blast radius of the pandemic and all its far-reaching impacts on youth development and wellbeing. Second, all the stressors that existed before COVID-19 still exist as we look toward 2023.

Brighter Days Ahead?
So, how can kids, teens, and their families find their way toward brighter days in 2023? We asked Sander and Wendy for their best tips to make the New Year a healthier one for mental health.

Some strategies can be implemented at home right now by shifting the ways that families interact with one another—and with technology.

“Spending time together without the internet, without video games, that’s really important,” Sander says.

Wendy concurs: “A huge tip is just getting outside as a family and enjoying outdoor activity together as much as possible.”

“I’d also say that parents shouldn’t be afraid of setting limits,” Wendy adds. “Don’t be afraid to specify when it’s time to turn off the phone. Having technology timeouts one to two hours before bed is especially important, because the blue light has an impact on stimulation and can affect their sleep. How about bringing in meditation or journaling or reading prior to bed instead? Those things make a huge difference in terms of getting better sleep—which in turn means less irritability, less anxiety, less depression. One of the big problems right now is that a lot of teens are on their devices 14-16 hours a day.”

Another option for families looking to be proactive about mental health in the New Year is to seek professional help—whether in a one-on-one capacity (like what Sander does) or in a group class-based environment (something Wendy offers).

Building The Toolbox
Wendy’s courses focus on the aforementioned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), an eight-week program that she says can provide “healthier coping strategies through mindfulness.” Participants can then take those strategies and put them in action to help deal with stressors in their day-to-day lives.

Developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in the 1970s, MBSR is an evidence-based approach that employs mindfulness meditation, body awareness, yoga, and other tactics to reshape the way the brain responds to certain negative stimuli. The program has been researched by institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and UCLA and has shown considerable benefits in helping people navigate stress, anxiety, severe depression, and even chronic pain.

“Every time I’m teaching these classes, I’m in tears, because the kids come in just feeling crushed—without a center and without anything to really hold on to,” Wendy says. “And then we learn that we have these inner resources that we can cultivate to deal with stress. A lot of times, teens come in really not wanting to [go through the program]. It’s often been recommended by a doctor, or their parents are forcing their teens to take the class because they’re struggling in some way. So, they come in with their heels a bit dug in.”

But eventually, things start to turn around. “By the second or third class, they are like sponges; they are just so open to the process,” Wendy continues. “And that’s because they start to see the benefits of breathing, and mindfulness, and meditation, and yoga, and all of these self-regulating practices. It’s just incredible to see the transformation by the end of the class. And then when they leave, they have this toolbox that they can reach for whenever they’re in the midst of a stressful moment.”

Sander says he often gets to see firsthand the extent of that before-and-after comparison. “I’ve had patients where we were doing therapy and utilizing both medications and supplements, just really working comprehensively to try to get the best outcomes, and they were still just stuck. Then they end up in one of these classes, and like Wendy said, they go in really gun-shy. But then by the fourth class, they’ll be saying to me, ‘This is the best night of the week for me.’ And then, on the other side when they’ve finished the class, I see that they’re still utilizing the strategies.”

Through Northern Michigan Psychiatric Services, Wendy offers MBSR programs for both teenagers and adults. While those classes are separate, Wendy does note that families can and do work through the process together. “I like when a parent takes the adult course concurrently with their teen taking the teen course,” she says. “They go at the same pace on different days, so families can work together on these strategies as a unit and bring them back home into their family dynamics.”

Interested in learning more about MBSR courses? Winter sessions start the week of January 23 and details are available online at nmpspc.com/classes.