Pubdate: Wed, 25 Feb 2015 Source: Expositor, The (CN ON) Copyright: 2015 Brantford Expositor Contact: http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/letters Website: http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1130 Author: Vincent Ball Page: A1 Mental Health and Addictions: Special series features live chat tonight IT IS A LAUGHING MATTER It turns out that laughter can be the best medicine, especially for teenagers. Dr. David Templeman, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, says that children who rely on substances to get through their teen years, will never develop the skills needed as a adult to live a happy independent life. "I tell them they need to fill their day with something that's fun," says Templeman, who will make a video appearance during a live chat on mental health and addictions that will be live-streamed starting at 6: 30 p. m. on The Expositor's website: www.brantfordexpositor.ca . "Teens need to ensure they have fun every day in a nice normal adaptive way." He says that he suggests teenagers watch a TV sitcom or something funny on YouTube and that they spend 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes after school laughing and enjoying life. "The simplest way that I can tell teenagers to do that is to make sure you laugh spontaneously a few times a day," says Templeman, Based in London, Ont., Templeman says that young people who regularly smoke marijuana are in danger of becoming psychotic. "For decades now, psychiatrists, doctors, have recognized there are certain people who will walk into your emergency room who are psychotic because they got high on weed and they end up not ever stopping being psychotic," he says. "The increase in the risk of developing schizophrenia is directly related to the amount of marijuana use and the length of time you have exposed your brain to the toxins. "Kids who get paranoid when they get high have a much greater risk that one day they will smoke up, get very paranoid and the paranoia will never stop whether they get high or not." It doesn't mean every teen who smokes weed will become psychotic, he adds. "It's a lot like smoking cigarettes and cancer, "Templeman explains. "Many people who smoke cigarettes for years never get cancer; others do get smoking-related cancers." The difficulty is that no one can predict who will develop the psychosis, he adds. Some of Templeman's patients are referred to him by St. Leonard's Community Services in Brantford. He says that substance abuse is a problem that begins in the teenage years and continues into adulthood. "The problem is that with adolescents the brain is still developing and the regular use of substances like marijuana is that it hijacks the pleasure-pathway of the brain," Templeman says. "If you're constantly using something else to provide happiness and feeling well, the brain decides that it doesn't need to do this for itself and eliminates that ability." It's kind of like always using a calculator for math, Templeman says. "If down the road your calculator breaks down or you don't have a calculator but still have to do math, it's going to be really hard for you because you won't know how to do it," he says. Substances help people be happy, he says. "If, down the road, you stop using substances, what ends up happening is your brain doesn't know how to self-regulate its own moods," Templeman says. "It doesn't know how to be happy without the substances and there's a fairly long period of time where your brain has to learn how to enjoy life. "It no longer has access to the artificial ways of enjoyment." Asked what he would tell teens who might dismiss what he has to say about smoking weed, Templeman is clear. "Well, I've never had a kid tell me I'm full of it," he says. "I've told them flat out that they need to stop because it's getting in their way of enjoying life and they agree. "But they know that they can't." He says teenagers need to know how their brain works and the critically important role their teen years play on their lives. "It's important for them to teach themselves through their own experiences the skills that they want," he says. "If they want to be happy, independent of anything else, if they want to wake up in the morning and enjoy life, they need to start practising how to do that now; not hope that it magically pops up as a skill when they're 25." [sidebar] SPECIAL SERIES Part 2 of The Expositor's special presentation - Mental Health: It's time to talk - resumes this week with a focus on addictions and mental health. In today's story, Dr. David Templeman, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, talks about the potential impact substance abuse can have on the adolescent brain. On Tuesday, readers learned abut Michelle Noiles, a Brantford woman who battled an addiction to cocaine and won. The Expositor's special presentation includes a live chat today that will be livestreamed from the main branch of the Brantford Public Library on The Expositor's website at www.brantfordexpositor.ca beginning at 6:30 p. m.. Live chat guests include Noiles, Judy Tomczak, a Brantford mother who had to learn how to help a daughter with a drug addiction, and Lindsay Serbu, the supervisor of concurrent disorders outreach team at St. Leonard's Community Services. As well, the event includes video appearances by Templeman and Dave Levac, Brant MPP and Speaker of the legislature. Part 1 of the special presentation, which focused on mental health and crisis, appeared in The Expositor in November. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt