Dr. Daniel Amen’s Tips for Parents Who Have Run Out of Options for Help

Dr. Amen opens with data he calls staggering: 57% of teenage girls report being persistently sad, 30% have thought about suicide, 24% have planned it, and 13%, roughly one in eight, have actually attempted it. Boys face their own rising tide of ADHD, depression, and addiction. His question for parents is direct: how do you actually know when it’s time to seek professional help? His answer is a simple test, not a specific diagnosis — if a child’s thoughts, feelings, or behavior are interfering with their relationships, their school or work, or how they feel about themselves, that’s the threshold. If your own child is expressing thoughts of suicide or self-harm, treat it as urgent: contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988 in the US) or go to the nearest emergency room right away.

Even as a board-certified psychiatrist who does prescribe medication, Dr. Amen is insistent that medication should never be the first or only step, and he warns parents to be wary of any professional who treats it that way. Amen says his own approach begins by looking at factors such as diet, exercise and device use, and he also mentions supplements tailored to what he calls a child’s “brain type.” Alongside this, he recommends teaching kids to notice and challenge what he calls ANTs, automatic negative thoughts, so they can think in more accurate, positive, and hopeful ways.

He’s equally direct about the parent’s own role, using a memorable line: children are like violins, they play the stress of their parents. If a parent is struggling with their own mental health, he says, getting help for themselves is part of helping their child. He also offers a specific script for opening a hard conversation: “It seems like you’re going through a hard time,” then stop and actually listen, followed by questions like “Do you want to talk about it?” and “What do you need from me?” The goal is to open the door rather than immediately offer solutions.

He closes with the story of Timmy, a 10-year-old referred to him for fighting at school, refusing homework, and visible anger and depression. Timmy’s father, an Oakland police officer, initially wanted nothing to do with seeing a psychiatrist and told Timmy’s mother the boy “just needs a good spanking.” Dr. Amen recounts that Timmy’s SPECT scan showed a pattern he calls the “ring of fire.” He says he prescribed supplements as part of Timmy’s treatment, while also identifying the strained father-son relationship as an important contributor to the boy’s difficulties: Timmy felt he could never please his father and that his father saw him only as a bad kid.

Because the family lived hours from the clinic, Dr. Amen had the father watch an online parenting course instead of attending regular sessions. A month later, everything had shifted. Rather than blaming Timmy, the father started spending focused time with him, learning to actually listen, noticing what Timmy liked rather than only what worried him, and helping him problem-solve instead of pushing his own solutions. The father later wrote that the course changed his whole relationship with his son, moving him from angry, ineffective, and critical to loving, present, and firm, and that he finally felt joy around his son instead of anger. Dr. Amen closes by arguing that addressing youth mental-health problems requires more than medication alone, emphasizing what he calls better brain health, deeper relationships, and the seven conversations taught in his program. He adds that this applies to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and anyone who mentors a child, because, as he puts it, a life is not just about you. It is about generations of you.