The search for identity: working therapeutically with adolescents in crisis

ABSTRACT In the news, there is frequent mention of adolescents’ mental health nowadays being ‘in crisis’. This paper offers the perspective of two psychotherapists working in a crisis service, trying to engage adolescents and their families in therapeutic work. There is an argument for a combined developmental, psychoanalytic and systemic approach to understand and work with the perceived mental health crisis in adolescence. This paper explores the desire of some adolescents today to have a mental health diagnosis and use specific, psychiatric-oriented language to frame and understand their distress. A cultural and theoretical exploration of this phenomenon is offered, viewing it as an expression of adolescents’ need for establishing their identity within peer groups, online and offline. The paper underlines the necessity for an approach where the whole network around the adolescent – the school, the parents, the therapist – work together to address the occurring crisis. The crisis this paper refers to is conceptualised as one involving developmental adolescent turmoil, expressed through mental health language.