When Lifestyle Changes Aren’t Enough to Reduce Stress

Some part of your first visit to the professional who will be treat­ing you is likely to be spent filling out forms. Unless you’ve made the appointment on your own and do not have the support of a family member, you’ll need to have a parent or guardian with you to sign some of the forms.

You’ll probably be asked to read information regarding the prac­tice’s privacy policy and fill out forms such as a statement of finan­cial responsibility (normally a parent completes that one), a personal history questionnaire, an authorization for release of protected health information, and possibly other forms. You’ll be asked to answer a lot of questions that are very personal, but it’s extremely important to be honest—that way, the professional who will be treating you can get an accurate assessment of what’s going on and learn what issues need to be addressed.

Some teens find it difficult to be completely truthful when they fill out personal history forms and questionnaires, which normally include questions concerning smoking, drug and alcohol use, and may contain questions about sexual history and other issues about which teens may be reluctant to share information. If you are asked to answer such questions, remember that an experienced health-care professional will have treated a great many patients, and it’s extremely unlikely that he or she will be disturbed or shocked by anything you write on the form. As a patient, it’s your responsibility to be honest in order to best facilitate treatment.

Under normal circumstances, before your treatment starts, you, your parents or guardian, and the therapist will have a conversation regarding what type of information will be shared with your parents, and what will remain confidential between you and the therapist. You might agree that parents will sit in on any sessions regarding medical problems, such as stress-related headaches, but will not be present for sessions during which you discuss situations in school that are making you feel stressed and causing problems. Joint sessions may be scheduled to deal with problems between your parents and you or other family members.

These situations vary from patient to patient and family to family, and it sometimes can be challenging to reach an agreement that suits all involved parties, but it’s important that an understanding is in place before therapy begins. You should realize that while conversa­tions between a health-care professional and a patient are generally confidential, a doctor or other mental health-care provider is obli­gated by law to report it if someone is threatening to harm himself or others. On the flip side, the same law may prevent a doctor from informing parents of issues such as repeated drug use. Much of what a doctor shares with parents will be determined by the conversation among the three parties prior to the start of treatment, so you can see that it’s important that the conversation takes place and all the parties involved share the same expectations.