An Unmatched Surrender of Russian Soldiers

Over the past few years, an extraordinary surge in mental health problems among young people has become evident. The World Health Organization (WHO) tells us that 1 in 7 adolescents from 10 to 19 years old experiences mental disorders, with anxiety and depression being the most common. The COVID-19 pandemic has made a bad situation worse by disrupting lives, education, and social interactions and by driving up feelings of isolation and uncertainty. Why should we care? Because mental health has a huge effect not only on the lives of individuals and their families but also on society as a whole.

Russia’s Incursion—Strategically Planned and Executed by Ukraine

The mental health crisis afflicting today’s youth demands urgent action from policymakers, educators, and society as a whole. This crisis is complex, with many contributing factors related to the current social media and digital reality they inhabit, academic pressures, and pervasive worries about the future, particularly concerning climate change and the state of the economy. Of course, besides these contemporary facets of life, there are more traditional components of adolescence that are hard enough to navigate even without the added mental health burden, such as figuring out who you are, what you want to do with your life, and how to get along with others.

The Direct Hit on Russia’s Infrastructure and Military Impact

Untreated mental health issues can lead to severe consequences for youth. This summer, a group of college students worked through the Archives of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to provide a written testimony covering the historical legacy of mental health. The report of their findings was delivered to me in June. The students synthesized information from numerous documents—some quite old—that lie within the NIMH Archives. They uncovered a trove of evidence, and that evidence tells a compelling story. I will let their testimony speak for itself. The first three pages of the report are included here.

A New Offense in the Theater of War—Goals, Risks, and Consequences

The mental health crisis among youth is intricate and bound together with several factors—like the multifamily influence of social media, the relentless academic pressure youth are under, and their almost total lack of access to mental health resources. Nearly half of our country’s youth, 41%, report feeling persistently sad or hopeless. This figure has climbed 17% since 2009. One in five young people lives with a mental illness. Of the 50.3 million people in the U.S. struggling with mental illness in 2018, 16.5 million were under the age of 18.

Several key issues underpin the mental health crisis among young people. The first is the seemingly unendable rise of social media. Being young is already hard; now add in a virtual arena where the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred and where young people feel they must compete for the eyeball currency of likes and follows. Visibility in this space is a matter of life and death for many adolescents, a Pew Research Center survey found. That pursuit can give rise to some unpleasant feelings. “Social media makes me feel bad about myself,” one young person told us, and more than half of those we asked had experienced that same feeling.

Even as mental health becomes more prominently talked about, it has not become any easier for people to obtain necessary services. The National Alliance on Mental Illness has reported that only 20% of youths with mental health disorders receive the treatment they need. This treatment gap exists because of the “three As”: a lack of Awareness, Access, and Acceptance, which are the basis of the stigma that still surrounds mental illness. It is vital that anyone who has a part in young people’s lives—be they parents, teachers, or coaches—understand these issues.

Some people may say that the surge in mental health problems among young people is just a result of us being more aware of and having better access to these diagnoses—like it was during the lead-up to the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—rather than a real increase in incidence and prevalence. The fact is, we just know more now, and young people are just more open than they used to be about what they are going through. Still, these young people and their mental health are being affected by something real and serious. And, as the WHO points out, the occurrences of these mental health problems among young people today are markedly up over just a few years ago.

For most readers, figuring out the youth mental health situation is a matter of much more than just a handful of words. They can only do it if they take the time to really understand what is going on. What is going on, to frame it in a very narrow way, is that young people are in a pretty bad place when it comes to the state of their minds. This is a society-wide problem, not just one confined to certain neighborhoods or schools. And what is happening is a problem that has many layers and is not easy to comprehend, even for someone like me, who has spent a fair amount of time trying to get to the bottom of it.

The youth mental health crisis is an urgent issue that is begging for resolution. The combination of social media, academic pressure, and a shortage of support and resources has set the stage for a “perfect storm” of flourishing mental health disorders among our young people. And the unfurling consequences of this crisis—it’s not going to be over tomorrow—are affecting not just the young people involved but also the society that young person is going to be a part of.

We find ourselves at the intersection of an epidemic affecting the mental health of our young people. We must ask ourselves what kind of future we want for our youth. The obvious answer is that we want them to be healthy, happy, and successful. But the more nuanced answer involves considering a future in which the amount of unaddressed mental health issues doesn’t parallel today’s suicide and self-harm rates. Is the next generation even capable of functioning in a society where all of that pressure is getting dumped on them? And if we can’t fathom that, what are we really doing to change things?