The Political Geography of Deep-Sea Minerals

In recent years, mental health has become one of the most serious challenges confronting society, especially among young people. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 1 in 6 individuals ages 10 to 19 experience a mental health condition. This doesn’t even account for the significant number of young people who suffer in silence, nor for the deterioration of mental health in our youth population in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a society, we can no longer afford to ignore the situation. The mental health of our youth is a concern that threatens to upend not only the public education system, the very foundation upon which our nation is built, but also the juvenile and young adult criminal justice systems, as well as the public health system overall.

Technical Hurdles and Environmental Issues

The youth mental health crisis is not just an individual problem but a pressing societal one. We have to stop treating the epidemic as if it were just one or two young people’s unfortunate lot in life and instead see it in the context of the more than 100,000 young people who, in any given year, attempt to take their lives. This suicide attempt rate among youth is up over 90 percent since the year 2000, and the rate of completed suicides among those ages 10 to 24 is up over 60 percent, with Black children in that age range seeing over a 100 percent increase.

Norway’s Attempts to Prospect and Mine

An imminent disaster looms over the mental health of today’s young people. The 2021 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that the number of adolescents with mental health conditions seen in emergency rooms had surged by 31% during the pandemic. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has sounded the alarm, calling the crisis a “national emergency” and insisting that it must be addressed NOW—that its consequences could last far into the future. The implications for our society—and for the young people involved—could hardly be more serious. After all, untreated mental health issues often lead to serious consequences: increased substance abuse, homelessness, and suicide. So many of our kids are struggling, and the toll on their lives is appalling.

The US Countereffort and Political Obstacles

To comprehend the origin of the youth mental health crisis, we must look at its foundational causes. The most substantial of these are the influences of social media, an always-on culture, and an uptight economics of adolescent achievement. The perfect storm formed by these factors has blown a tremendous number of our youngsters into the mental health abyss. A study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry reported that adolescents who tend to use social media heavily (three or more hours per day) are at a significantly heightened risk for a selection of mental health problems, especially anxiety and depression.

Youth mental health is deteriorating, pressured by a confluence of interrelated factors. First, there is the steady march of social media, which now pervades every aspect of young people’s lives. While they can’t look away from the screens, they’re actually forming fewer real-world connections. Past studies have linked loneliness to social media use, but life isn’t made any easier when our online lives are constantly scrutinized. And let’s face it: young people’s online lives aren’t often very real. Elissa Strauss writes in The Atlantic, “[O]nline loneliness, depression, and inadequacy among teens might be an unforeseen outcome of virtual reality.” There’s more. If young people are using the virtual platform in a more unhealthy way than previous generations, then they’re also experiencing rising rates of actual mental health crises.

There are those who would contend that the heightened emphasis on mental health is nothing but a fad, or that it is simply our generation of young people being more expressive than past generations about the difficulties they face. However, the actual statistics tell a different story. The current mental health crisis is an actual event, not just the upsurge in reporting. And the rise has a clear cause: increased societal pressures stemming from our ultra-modern lives. Ignoring our appearance of a mental health crisis as the current “in” thing to pay attention to only belittles the actuality of the serious situation countless people find themselves in.

The average reader is profoundly affected by what is going on with the mental health of our youth. As future leaders, workers, and caretakers, our children today are very much part of tomorrow. Their shared mental wellness and its trajectory directly impacts our society’s future. At its best, this generation’s wellness is a positive mental health dividend. At its worst, our future society is unlikely to enjoy much in the way of peace, prosperity, or community engagement.

The youth mental health emergency is a many-sided problem that requires immediate action. Young people today live in an unrelenting fish bowl of public scrutiny, enhanced by social media, where every achievement and failure is amplified. They are also living in the shadow of a pandemic that, even two years on, continues to reverberate in our lives, and underneath that hangs a cloud of academic pressure that wears them down and can snap them in two. Meanwhile, young people who actually need mental health care are often unable to get it.

We are at a pivotal point in the mental health epidemic and must make a choice. Our society’s future and our young people’s future depend on our steering this ship in a better direction. We can’t let the status quo persist. Mental health must be a priority. Clear, supportive paths to mental health must be available for every young person in this country. We can’t afford the alternative.