The Kids are Not All Right
Dear Leading Ladies,
What is nostalgia? Is it memory filtered through at least a couple of pairs of rose-colored glasses? Is it what we wish our past had been or just the best of what it was?
When we look back at our teen years, we may remember a fun-filled time of football games or school plays and parties with friends, or years of loneliness and not fitting in, waiting to get out of our cities and towns to get on to college or jobs. We may recall some bullying, either endured, witnessed, or perpetrated, but if memory serves – and we have already ascertained that it may not – it seemed mostly to consist of anonymous phone calls, name calling, pushing or snubbing in hallways, and was far less common than it is today. Of course, this is not to dismiss its effect on the targets, only to point out the relatively smaller reach of the problem.
What we also don’t recall is the concept of building resumes for college or obsessing over college application essays. Did our parents even look at our essays, let alone worry about getting tutors to help us write them? Today’s pressure may be on only a certain segment of college-bound teens, but for them it is very real.
Was there systemic racism? Of course, though many of us white students were blind to it. Was there sexual violence among students? None that we heard of, though date rape probably occurred and was discounted.
And stress? Depression? Surely, some of us came from families with financial, housing, or food insecurity, and/or histories of PTSD from domestic abuse, WWII, the Korean War, or the Holocaust. And we know now that there were innumerable children abused by priests and suffering their traumas in silence. LGBTQ kids, too, were unrecognized and in hiding, afraid to come out and taught to feel ashamed. Yet, the depth and breadth of suffering among today’s teens seems different.
And no, we don’t think it is just because kids and the adults in their lives feel freer to talk about problems. One of the most obvious changes seems to be that, today, the number of platforms and media through which a child can be bullied seems to be multiplying. And the accountability appears to be shrinking. The speed at which students can learn of – and view in frightening detail – yet another instance of gun violence killing their peers is astounding. And the college industry that thrives on competition for schools, and the promise of jobs, success, and prestige, fires up parental insecurities and creates anxiety in adolescents. Is any of this worse than living during a world war or economic depression? According to a new report, apparently so.
Oh, for the ol’ days of “Greased Lightnin’”
The Center for Disease Control just published a report on the mental health of our teens. The findings are alarming, to say the least. According to the CDC's 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, nearly 3 in 5 teen girls (57%) said they felt "persistently sad or hopeless." Thirty percent said they have seriously considered dying by suicide — an almost 60% rise over the past 10 years. The study has been done every other year for the past three decades and includes responses from 17,232 U.S. high school students.
“I think there’s really no question what this data is telling us,” Dr. Kathleen Ethier, head of the C.D.C.’s adolescent and school health program, told The New York Times. “Young people are telling us that they are in crisis.” Most experts see the COVID epidemic as causal in the rise in depression and hopelessness, and at least one expert, Dr. Victor Fornari, the vice chair of child and adolescent psychiatry for Northwell Health, New York’s largest health system, draws a straight line from the introduction of smartphones to the rise in teen depression. “Kids are now vulnerable to cyberbullying and critical comments, like ‘I hate you’, ‘Nobody likes you,’” he said. “It’s like harpoons to their heart every time,” he told the Times.
“Overall, more than 40% of boys and girls said that they'd felt so sad or hopeless within the past year that they were unable to do their regular activities, such as schoolwork or sports, for at least two weeks,” NBC reported last week. “When researchers looked at gender differences, girls were far more likely to report such feelings than boys.”
More than “Raining on Prom Night”
Violence and sexual violence towards girls has risen dramatically in the past few years, and may be a contributing factor to feelings of hopelessness, but the study did not ask participants why they felt sad or depressed. It would be interesting to learn if existential threats such as climate change, gun violence, or racism significantly affect the teens’ mental health. Omitting the question from the study seems to be a shortcoming that could be easily rectified next time. The results could aid in designing interventions.
What is elucidating is that the increase in sadness and hopelessness was reported across all racial groups. “Though Black students were less likely to report these negative feelings than other groups, they were more likely to report suicide attempts than white, Asian or Hispanic adolescents,” according to the New York Times.
Among LGBTQ teens, 52% reported struggling with mental health, and more than 1 in 5 had attempted suicide in the last year. Stigma and violence toward LGBTQ were noted as causes of this group’s anguish.
Another interesting finding was the drop in alcohol and marijuana use among teens, as well as less sex with fewer partners, and a drop in bullying, though it is still rampant.
One retired educator friend says she believes the emphasis on achievement and possibility is particularly hurting girls. Suddenly, young girls are not only told they can do anything, but that they should. And they should excel at everything they do, too. The pressure, our educator friend says, is causing incredible stress on the girls, while the boys are now left to find their way in a more relaxed atmosphere. Her assessment is only anecdotal, but warrants consideration when we view the numbers from the CDC report.
In our mission, Leading Ladies includes equal access to quality health care. Mental health care is part of health care, of course, and advocating for mental health care for adolescents of all races and ethnicities, in all socioeconomic groups, and all sexual orientations, is part of that mission. If our young people are not healthy, our country can not be healthy. And our future will not be healthy.
“Those Magic Changes”
Ensuring mental health among our teens means more than providing counseling services. It also means tackling the causes of the depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation that has risen among this population. Some initiatives can be as simple as providing adult supervision in locker rooms, as our speaker Alex Myers suggested to us last spring, in order to prevent bullying in one of the most potentially dangerous areas for cruelty among young people.
Larger systemic interventions include changing the culture around college applications and admissions; providing comprehensive sex education; beefing up access funds so that children without means don’t have to worry about buying books, having money for school trips, or other ancillary expenses; instituting more comprehensive regulations on social media usage; passing more gun control laws so that our students don’t need to be afraid of gun shootings in school; pushing Congress to fund programs for those who have suffered trauma (a suggestion from Anna King, president of the national PTA); funding school budgets to have school psychologists, social workers, and guidance counselors available in all schools for consultation with teachers, evaluation, referral, and treatment.
If a teen you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources. Other resources: National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233; stopbullying.gov.
Be well,
Therese (she/her/hers)
Judy (she/her/hers)
Didi (she/her/hers)
Mackenzie (she/her/hers)
Leading Ladies Executive Team
leadingladiesvote.org
ladies@leadingladiesvote.org