• Skip to main content

Brain Treatment Columbus and Cincinnati

MeRT and TMS treatment for Autism, Depression, TBI and More In Columbus and Cincinnati OH

  • Home
  • About
    • Meet our Team
    • Areas We Service
    • Our Blog
  • MeRT
    • MeRT Overview
    • MeRT Testimonials
    • Science
    • Initial Patient Analysis
    • MeRT Videos
  • Conditions
    • Conditions Treated Overview
    • MeRT for Autism
      • A Safer Alternative to Drugs for Autism
      • TMS Treatment for Autism: New Review Shows Promising Results
    • MeRT for Depression
    • MeRT for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
    • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
    • MeRT for Anxiety
    • MeRT for Cognitive Decline
    • MeRT for Stroke Recovery
  • Reviews
  • Contact
    • Contact Us
    • Places to Stay and Things to Do
    • Areas We Service
  • 614-714-1966

General

Anxiety in Teens: How to Know When It’s More Than Just “Growing Pains”

September 20, 2022 by Debbie Baumgarten

Anxiety in teens is becoming a far greater issue these days, with constant pressure to perform and ever-present social media. Plus, the pandemic only made things more difficult: Covid lockdowns robbed teenagers of many of the most important activities of their high school years, isolated them from friends, and disrupted their education. So it’s no wonder they may be dealing with more anxiety than usual!

Certainly, all teens will experience anxiety from time to time — it’s the body’s normal response to help deal with the stress of things like public speaking, upcoming exams, athletic competitions, and first dates. For some teens, however, feelings of anxiety can interfere with normal daily life and affect their friendships, activities, and progress in school. This is when you may be looking at an anxiety disorder.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly 32 percent of adolescents (aged 13-18) suffer from an anxiety disorder. That’s why it’s vital to know what causes anxiety in teens, how to spot the signs, and what to do about it if you feel your teen may have an anxiety disorder.

Learn More About Our Anxiety Treatment

Our New Patient Coordinator can answer your questions, explain the procedures and go over all the details.

Call Now: 614-714-1966
Anxiety in Teens

What Can Cause Anxiety in Teens?

anxiety in teens

Many things can potentially cause anxiety in teens, including:

  • A family history of mood or anxiety disorders
  • Environmental pressure and high expectations
  • Differences in brain chemistry, particularly the levels of dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine
  • Trauma, such as sexual abuse, violence, or an accident
  • Stresses caused by the hormonal changes of puberty

In addition to genetics, personality, brain chemistry, and life events, we have to consider how different the world is for today’s teens. Social media keeps them constantly connected, and comparing themselves to others. And events like school shootings, terrorist attacks, and the like have made the world feel scary and threatening.

Staying in good communication with your teenager is the first step to ensuring they’re doing okay with all that pressure. But it’s also important to know the signs of anxiety since teens are often good at hiding their feelings.

Anxiety Signs and Symptoms

It’s not always easy to know if your teen is dealing with anxiety, since the signs show up differently in teens than they do in children or adults. Children, for example, get anxious about things external to them, like the dark, monsters, or something happening to their parents. Teens are more likely to feel anxious about themselves.

It can be difficult to know if a teen is exhibiting behavior that’s a normal part of growing up or behavior that may indicate a mental health condition. However, if behavioral changes last for a long period (weeks or months), and if they interfere with a teenager’s daily life, they may be symptoms of an anxiety disorder.

Here are a few signs to look out for:

  • Low energy
  • No interest in things they used to enjoy doing
  • Sleeping too much or seeming to be tired all the time despite sleep
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Avoiding social activities and spending more time alone than usual
  • Excessive weight gain or loss
  • Self-harm behaviors, such as cutting or burning their skin
  • Drinking alcohol, smoking, or using drugs
  • Irritability or lashing out
  • Difficulty breathing, chest tightness, or other signs of a panic attack
  • Dropping grades or avoiding school

How to Help Your Teen with Anxiety

If you feel that your teen may have an anxiety disorder, the first thing to do is to see a professional who is trained in diagnosing these disorders. Many treatments exist for anxiety, including therapies and medications. However, it’s vital to get an accurate diagnosis to ensure proper treatment.

Here at Brain Treatment Columbus, we provide a breakthrough treatment for anxiety: MeRT, or Magnetic e-Resonance Therapy. MeRT is non-invasive, drug-free, and has helped thousands break free from the debilitating symptoms of anxiety and depression.

MeRT can be used along with other treatments but has also been successful when medications haven’t helped or have caused complex side effects.

To find out more about MeRT and how it works, please visit our MeRT Overview page. And read some of the amazing successes from MeRT treatment on our Testimonials page.

anxiety in teens

Questions About MeRT for Anxiety? Call our New Patient Coordinator.

You may have a lot of questions about whether MeRT is the right treatment for your teen’s anxiety. We want to make sure you get all the information you need to make the best possible decision, and that begins with a call to our New Patient Coordinator.

The New Patient Coordinator is here to help you. She’ll take the time to listen, answer questions, explain costs, and put your mind at ease. Additionally, she can help you get scheduled if you decide that yes, MeRT is the right treatment.

Contact our New Patient Coordinator.

Or fill out the form below and she will contact you.

Call 614-714-1966

Filed Under: Blog, General Tagged With: Anxiety, Anxiety in Teens, Brain Treatment Columbus, Magnetic e-Resonance Therapy, MeRT

A Mother’s Story

April 13, 2022 by Debbie Baumgarten

We have a beautiful daughter, Raquel and she was diagnosed with severe autism at the young age of 1 ½ years. Rachel did not follow directions, she did not look into my eyes, she did not want to be touched, she did not speak, she did not listen or respond to her name, she did not distinguish me as her mother, and I could clearly feel she was very anxious all the time.

Desperate, and with the intention of doing my best to guarantee a better quality of life for my daughter, for 4 years I investigated and took all available routes to try to help her overcome her condition. I took her to different types of therapy (phonoaudiology, occupational, behavioral, and sensory integration), in addition to a diet regime free of casein and gluten. All these efforts were important and helped my daughter have small signs of improvement, but Raquel was far from making any significant progress – doctors still gave her the same severe diagnosis.

It was not until the fourth year of this endless quest that we finally came up with something that would change our lives, and the life of our daughter forever. When it seemed that all alternatives were exhausted, Dr. Jeff Bradstreet told me about a new therapy in Newport Beach, California, called MeRT, which consisted of repetitive brain stimulation through magnetic waves. There was already strong empirical evidence that they help to regulate brain functioning quickly, safely, effectively, and permanently.

Dr. Bradstreet explained that there were 20% of people who, for some unknown reason, did not respond to treatment, but an 80% chance of improvement was definitely an opportunity that I was not willing to let go, especially if it had to do with the well-being of my girl.

I traveled to California and they explained what the treatment consisted of. Rachel was going to do an EEG (Electroencephalogram) to determine exactly what was happening in her brain so that they could design a treatment tailored to her needs.

The study confirmed that the front of her brain did not work properly so Rachel did not process the information like the other children. With the clearest panorama and high optimism, I agreed to start treatment immediately. I could not wait to start.

On the first day of therapy, I thought my daughter wouldn’t cooperate. To my surprise, she seemed to enjoy the procedure. Obviously, at the end of the day, I saw no changes in her behavior, but I did not expect to see results so fast. The story takes a really unexpected turn for all of us at the end of the second day of therapy.

We went back to the house of some relatives, where we were spending the night, and Raquel approached me, with a glass between her little hands asking me to give her some “Juz”. There are no words that can express the emotions that I felt at that moment. All the people who know me ask me if I shed tears of joy in that moment. It was the first time I could say that I had heard the voice of my 4-year-old daughter. Incredibly this was not all. A few minutes later my daughter went out to the garden of the house, approached a lemon tree, took one, and brought it to her face to smell it. For a little girl who practically lived in the corner of the room, interacting with her shadow, this was a revelation, to the point that a few moments later, when her sister took the lemon from her hands, Raquel demanded loudly “My, Lemon?” Only two days of therapy had passed and we suddenly had what seemed, for the first time in her short life, a normal child.

At the end of the second week of treatment, we arrived at the Clinic excited and very eager to share with the medical staff the great advances that we had seen after the second therapy. The Director of Center approached me and asked me to accompany him to the game room where Raquel was. I will never forget that moment. He said, “Look at your daughter.” Raquel was there, sitting by a window. She was pointing to the passing cars and asking out loud: “Blue Car?”, “Green Car?”, also an airplane “Blue Plane with White?”

Most incredible of all was that not only had she improved her ability to communicate, but her emotional projection also took a 180-degree turn. My daughter now asked me to pick her up and carry her in my arms. She hugged me for the first time voluntarily and repeatedly for more than 15 minutes. Aside from improving in language, she also improved her emotional connection. They were the most beautiful 15 minutes of my life. My daughter recognized me and expressed it openly and freely for the first time.

Since that day she did not let me go, everything she wanted to do, was with me. When I realized these great changes I began to carry out other activities with my daughter. What I can not forget to mention is that Raquel’s anxiety did not allow us to take her anywhere. When we went to a mall, the screams were so loud that a man even asked if she needed an ambulance. To take her to the U.S. was horrible too, because customs officers could not understand how this girl could not calm down with her mother. After 3 weeks of therapy Raquel even tolerated going to Disney. That frightful part of our lives was over. Now I was free to walk with my daughter and she was for the first time able to enjoy the rides. I meditated about why God sent this miracle to me. I came to the conclusion that if Raquel did so well, it had to be for something greater than us. At the end of the Treatment and seeing the progress, I decided to meet with the key people of the company and asked them to send a MeRT machine to Panama. When I got to the office I sat down with them and explained that I would not be able to live without the machine that brought me so many miracles. It took a year, but we finally managed to open the doors of Brain Treatment Center in Panama, and provide thousands of people with a treatment that could be the change they sought in their lives, closer, more accessible and comfortable. – Raquel’s Mother *

Filed Under: General

A Vet who Struggled with PTSD

April 19, 2021 by Debbie Baumgarten

After returning from Iraq, Sgt. Jon Warren struggled with PTSD and sought various forms of treatment to improve his mental health to no avail. Then he found MeRT.

When I came in, I was a mess. I was terrified of not getting better, of trying yet another very hopeful procedure that was going to let me down. So I sat down and had my EEG and I remember waiting for the doctor to interpret it and thinking what if this thing comes back normal, then what, and where do I go from here. That was scary. But as soon as he pulled it up, he said, “Woah, it looks like your frontal cortex is sleeping right now,” and he started describing to me a lot of my symptoms that they could tell, just by the loss of synchronicity that was in my brain, and the neurons that weren’t working in my favor, that they could tell that I was impulsive, that I would have a substance abuse issue, that I wasn’t sleeping, that I was depressed, that it was difficult for me to concentrate, and the list goes on. But they were just very accurate in describing situations that would play out in my life.

What they were going to use was magnetic stimulation to basically tune my brain back up, to get my frequencies right in my head and to allow my brain to communicate with itself, and all I had to do was to get some sunlight in the morning and I get to bed at night. I slept great the very first night, I slept for about 10 hours. I was really excited about that and I didn’t notice that much for about two weeks. I sat down to have a drink with a buddy and we usually went to drink a handle of rum together. After the first cocktail, he went to pour another one and I just told him I’m okay right now, which was shocking even to me, because that wasn’t my norm. I was usually very anxious and needed to calm down somehow. But in this particular instance, I felt really good. I wanted to test that, that relief of anxiety and that peace that I felt because I was sitting across from my best friend and thought, maybe this was a fluke.

But the next day I went to the clinic and instead of leaving after my 30-minute treatment, I decided to stick around for another 30 minutes, and in doing so, I realized that I was able to be in connection with people. I sat down and I was calm and present and centered for the first time. I was actually able to hear people speaking and my mind wasn’t racing. I was able to keep track of the conversation that was happening and give feedback and contribute to the conversation. I actually enjoyed it, I felt connected and it was very addicting to me and I wanted more of that feeling. So I just started hanging around more and more and it was freeing. I just felt like I have got to come out more and more of my shell and stop isolating and I was getting back to who I was before, which was an outgoing social, friendly, life-of-the-party kind of guy.” See a video of Jon’s talk here.

Talk with our New Patient Coordinator

It doesn’t cost anything to call us and talk about what is happening. Our New Patient Coordinator is here to listen, explain the process and protocols, costs, possible insurance benefits, and any other details you want to know. She is here for you and can answer your questions. There are no obligations and she will take the time you need to know whether or not you should take the next steps.

Call Our New Patient Coordinator to Learn More

(619) 255-2101

Or fill in the form below and she will contact you.

Contact Us

For more information or to speak with our New Patient Coordinator, please fill in the information below.

  • Absolute Contraindications

    Absolute contraindications for cortical MeRT treatment: Pacemaker, Defibrillator, Vagal Nerve Stimulator, VP Shunt/ Magnetic intracranial shunts, Deep Brain Stimulator, Epidural Cortical stimulator, Steel shunts/stents, Cranial metal fragments (i.e. shrapnel, excluding titanium), Cochlear implant, Aneurysm clips, coils, pipelines flow diversion, Pregnant or breastfeeding, Primary brain cancer / metastatic legions in brain (unless palliative care), Magnetic dental implants, Implanted cardio-verter defibrillators (ICD), Ocular implants.
  • Relative Contraindications

    Relative contraindications require closer protocol attention and may or may not disqualify someone from receiving cortical MeRT treatment, depending on the doctor’s discretion and the person’s individual condition. These include:: History of Seizure or seizure disorder, Titanium shunts/stents, Spinal Cord Stimulator, Hearing aids, Ferrous cortical implants, Magnetic ink tattoo, Bipolar Disorder Type I/II, Baha Implant.

Filed Under: Blog, General, Testimonials Tagged With: Autism, Autism Acceptance, Autism Awareness, Brain Treatment Center San Diego, Magnetic e-Resonance Therapy, MeRT

  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions

Copyright © 2025 · Site By CPS