Book Review: Understanding Teenage Anxiety: A Parent's Guide to Improving Your Teen's Mental Health by Jennifer Browne and Cody Buchanan

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge,from Skyhorse Books,  via Edelweiss, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it, all opinions are my own

If you’re the parent of a teenager experiencing chronic anxiety, this book is for you.

Synopsis

Today’s teens are high-strung and socially overextended. We shrug it off as a millennial problem, but is it? In a world that encourages the quick fix, instant gratification, and real-time feedback, can we really expect our children to cope as we did less than two decades ago, in the land of handshakes, eye contact, elbow grease, and grit?

This book is a product of a combination of three very different perspectives: those of the anxious teen, the parent, and the therapist. We need to understand what we’ve created in terms of our current society to gain proper insight on why we’re seeing increasingly rising levels of anxiety in our teenagers. Topics include:

Physical and Emotional Symptoms of Anxiety

Teens and Self-Harm

Anxiety and Gut Health

Sports: Concussions and Anxiety

Natural Ways to Help Your Teen Cope

And much, much more

Within each chapter, author (and parent) Jennifer Browne and co-author (Jennifer’s teenage son) Cody Buchanan, who struggles with anxiety and depression, will weigh in on what this affliction feels like, physically, mentally, and emotionally. They share personal experiences to help parents better understand their teens and learn a lot along the way.

Review:

What instantly makes this book VERY different from the rest of them out there, is that it comes FROM a teenager's point of view as well! having her son help her with the book is not only a new angle, but an amazing voice FOR teens themselves! Obviously one's person experience isn't the same for another's, but at the core-the social pressures social media has wrought, the changes in schooling and extra curriculars, and pressure to get into college, is universal for most teens. By talking about how stress can be caused by and from anxiety, and vice versa, Browne offers parents, and teens, a starting point for family discussions. From there, it's how best to cope- what works for your child best, be it therapy, meds, or natural methods. But understanding the ROOT of the issue is the key to helping our teens become stronger day by day. If you have teens, or more importantly have tweens, get this book now and and see what may actually be symptoms of anxiety that they need HELP with now, before they become huge issues! 

About the Authors:

Jennifer Browne is the author of several non-fiction works, including Happy Healthy Gut, Vegetarian Comfort Foods, The Good Living Guide to Medicinal Tea, and Baby Nosh. She’s currently working on a book on teenage anxiety and finds inspiration for her projects within her own experiences. Browne resides just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia with her dog and three children, one of whom shot the photographs for this book. Tweet her @jennifer_browne.

Cody Buchanan has personal experience with chronic anxiety. As a young teen, he suffered in silence for years, and he was sixteen before his condition became apparent to others, almost nineteen before treatment commenced. Buchanan is the oldest son of Jennifer Browne and agreed to participate in this project to help others better understand their anxious family members.