How would a parent go about getting help
for their child without medication?
Um, and, uh, my son is not even open
to see a therapist, so I'm not really sure exactly
what the issue is there.
Um, but obviously the sun is not open to see the therapist
and they're really wanting to, uh,
take a non-medication approach.
Yeah, yeah, that, that's pretty common.
A lot of people are uncomfortable with medications.
That's, there's, that's, that's very common.
So in situations like that, the medication, depending on
what it's for, whether it's for anxiety
or whether it's for depression, uh,
there are other alternatives that, uh, are, are helpful.
So let, let's just say for example,
another one would be A-D-H-D-I.
We haven't mentioned A DHD tonight,
but one of the things that we know, some of the best ways
that we improve our mental health, yours mind,
and everybody are through things that we do,
eating, exercise, and sleep.
I mean, if you really want to emphasize the improvement
of mental health, those three things
are absolutely part of the answer.
So if you, again, my invitation here is
to improve your mental health by doing some of the basics.
So if my you want, you don't want medication,
then there needs to be some, say, exercise routine
that's helpful for the child.
Uh, an example of that, uh,
there is a wonderful book called Spark.
And in the book Spark, John Rady, RATY,
he has a whole chapter on the bene, well,
his whole book is about the benefits of exercise
and how it influences our mental health.
But in Naperville, Illinois, they did a study
and what they did is they gave children heart rates
and they got their heart rates one
and a half times their resting.
They exercised for about 15 to 20 minutes,
and then two hours later when they were taking standardized
tests, they performed some of the best in the country.
They did this for weeks
and months at a time, weeks and months at a time.
And they found that those who were consistently there did
better on standardized tests.
So our, our mental health, uh, depression, anxiety,
literally can be reduced by exercise,
proper sleep, and eating healthy.
Those are things that you can do that are naturally,
for the most part, it's relatively inexpensive,
other than maybe buying some running shoes
or buying a swim pass
or getting the food, that's healthy for us.
But if you can focus on those things, you can at least, uh,
put a dent in some
of the mental health challenges I could add to that.
The things that we wanna reduce,
we wanna reduce too much screen time.
We wanna reduce conflict so they feel safe in the home.
And we wanna reduce their, what I would say,
their stress level through too much information.
And again, it's not just screen time, screen time,
sometimes it's just overwhelming, too much information.
So teaching our children to have quiet space, time alone,
journaling times, time to ponder, time to meditate,
that's actually healthy for you, me and all of us.
That's not just something that's good
for children, it's good for all of us.
So those are some things that I would start with if,
if you're not gonna do the medication route, and,
and if you wanna do that, that's how I would approach it.
