Growing up is tough, and being a teenager brings huge changes inside and out. While teens grow taller on the outside, massive shifts are happening inside their brains. At the same time, teenagers are dropped into a world full of big expectations and new daily pressures. All of these outside stresses mix with how their brains grow to shape how they feel every day.
Few phrases in popular culture are as unhelpful—or as unkind—as "failure to launch." It conjures an image of a young adult stalled on the runway while everyone else soars past, and it places the blame squarely on the individual, as if the only missing ingredient were willpower. At Upward Behavioral Health, we see something very different when we sit down with these young adults and their families. We see capable, often deeply thoughtful people who are navigating a genuinely difficult transition with brains and nervous systems that may not be well served by conventional expectations. When we replace judgment with understanding, a new path forward becomes possible.
For most people, life has periods of giving and receiving care. Individuals in a caregiving role—whether to small children, aging family members, or friends in need—may find that this begins to take a toll. Longer periods of care, especially for individuals who are not likely to improve, can become very taxing and wear down mental health, leading to compassion fatigue and caregiver burnout.
For decades, researchers have worked to better understand why women are about twice as likely as men to develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We know that differences in trauma exposure explain part of that disparity. Women are more likely to experience certain types of trauma, including sexual assault and childhood sexual abuse, both of which carry a particularly high risk for developing PTSD. But that has never been the whole story. Increasingly, researchers are asking another question: Could the natural hormonal changes women experience throughout life also influence how PTSD symptoms are experienced? While this area of research is still evolving, studies published over the past decade have begun pointing in a similar direction. From the menstrual cycle to pregnancy and the menopausal transition, researchers are finding that women’s reproductive biology may be a more important part of understanding PTSD than previously recognized.