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When Your Teenager's Mind Gets Loud: Understanding Intrusive Thoughts and OCD in Adolescents, and How You Can Help

Author(s) : Marcus Lewton

Reviews and Endorsements

'This expertly crafted book tenderly navigates the emotional landscape of intrusive thoughts and OCD and its impact on family relationships. Intrusive thoughts and OCD are discussed with such gentleness and attention to emotional attunement that it envelops the reader in a sense of feeling held and contained at the most distressing of times. What unfolds is a narrative that offers the underpinnings of an emotional and relational model of parental and systemic responding within OCD distress whilst also offering parents permission to create space and remain steady alongside their loved one. Crucially, it provides an important framework for preserving and maintaining the most important factor for young adults in distress: the relationship.’
Dr Heledd Lewis, DClinPsy, HCPC Registered Practitioner Psychologist, Former NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Lead, Member, Association of Clinical Psychologists (Complex Mental Health Faculty)

‘As a Specialist CAMHS Nurse, I work closely with children and young people experiencing OCD and, just as importantly, with the parents who support them every day. This book is an invaluable resource that combines professional expertise with genuine compassion. It offers parents a deeper understanding of both OCD and the challenges families can face when living alongside it, while gently guiding them in how they can support their child with confidence. Thoughtful, accessible, and deeply empathetic, it highlights the powerful role parents can play in creating a sense of safety and stability, even when OCD feels overwhelming. I have no doubt that many families will find comfort, encouragement, and hope within these pages. An excellent and much-needed addition to the resources available for parents.’
Kelly-Jane Williams, Specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Nurse

‘My wife and I have found this book instrumental in helping us understand our teenage daughter. We've struggled for years, attended all the appointments, and used all the resources, but it wasn't until this book that we appreciated how the relationship one has with their OCD can really influence how they respond, and how we can respond in turn. Times can still be challenging, but now we have a fighting chance. We just wish we'd had this thinking earlier.’
Parents, sharing their experience of the book

‘I have had the privilege of working with Marcus over several years. He is highly thoughtful about his patients, bringing an ongoing curiosity to his work with patients and families that is both dynamic and individual. He applies sensitive thinking throughout his clinical work, and this book captures these qualities from the outset. Marcus draws on a range of modalities, integrating his knowledge and experience into his clinical practice in a way the book reflects throughout. It is highly relatable for patients and families, written so that parents of children experiencing OCD can recognise their own experience in its pages. The book allows readers to see beyond the symptoms of OCD, exploring the panic, terror, and complexity parents face, and the positions they find themselves in when trying to understand the mind of a child living with OCD.’
Gary Catterall, PsychD, Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, ACP