“Co-dependency” is a term that was originally used to describe behavior often observed among people who lived with alcoholics or substance abusers. However, once psychologists and counselors got wise to this type of relationship disorder, they could see it sometimes existed in other situations as well. The tricky thing about co-dependency is that it is an extreme form of a healthy behavior. Well, if you think about it, that’s true of a lot of things! Take something as simple as liking a TV program: you start with making sure you watch it every week; then you might progress to buying all of the DVDs and joining internet forums to talk…

Children raised by alcoholic parents are certainly at risk of becoming alcoholics themselves. Both genes and environment play a part in whether or not a person becomes an alcoholic. But of the two, environment is more important: a large twin study found that the children of men with no history of alcohol dependence, whose identical twin brothers were alcoholics, were no more likely to abuse alcohol than the children of non-alcoholic twins. In itself, given that the child of an alcoholic is likely to be raised in that environment, that’s not necessarily all that encouraging. And yet it is. You can’t do anything about your genes, but you can do…

Child abuse often occurs in the presence of alcohol or drugs, but by no means exclusively. Studies suggest around a third of abuse incidents occur when the abuser is drunk or high. Abusive parents are very likely to have been abused by their own parents, or have witnessed abuse (such as their father’s abuse of their mother). This abuse could be physical or emotional — some abusers who were not physically abused nevertheless have low self-esteem related to their negative experiences with a parent. This doesn’t mean, if you are the child of someone who abuses you, you should believe you have to be understanding and forgiving! It is not…

Depression is the most common psychological problem teenagers have, with maybe 20% or even more, suffering at least one episode. But, happily, more often than not, one episode is all it will be. However, for around 40% of teenagers who have early depression (by age 15), bouts of depression will recur again and again. These teenagers usually have a history of anxiety disorders, phobias or panic attacks, as well as poor social relationships. Depression itself is usually triggered by stress — but not just any stress. Most often, the stressful events are at least partly caused by the person’s attitudes and behaviors (rather than being completely out of your control,…

We wouldn’t write stories about people whose lives were perfect, would we? And not simply because noone’s lives are! We like to read about other people’s problems. Sometimes it’s because we want to know how to deal with our own problems; sometimes it’s to remind ourselves that our own problems aren’t so bad; sometimes it’s simply because there’s no drama without problems — no mystery, no suspense, no angst, maybe even no humor! But it’s not the having problems that’s important — stories show us people overcoming problems. That’s what it’s all about. In my Young Adult books Secrets have jagged edges and The sharpest edge, people have a number…