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Sharing – Students Say Mental Health Isn’t Taboo – But Talking to Parents Is

ByMikeM September 29, 2026October 1, 2026 Reading Time: 1 minute

Surveys do seem to paint a clear picture, and this is the one bit you should remember, especially if you’re a parent:

In a national study on mental health stigma and help-seeking among teens in the journal Focus, researchers from the Jed Foundation found that the main reasons teens hesitated to talk to parents were fear of being misunderstood, feeling uncomfortable talking about the problem and that parents would try to solve the problem instead of listening.

Students Say Mental Health Isn’t Taboo – But Talking to Parents Is

I’m not a parent, but I can imagine how much I would want to help my kids if I had any. The urge to fix the problem would be strong, as would the urge to assume my kids are okay because we’re raising them right.

The truth is that both of those urges are doing more harm than good, and may be the reason kids are comfortable talking to their peers and online about mental health, but not their own parents.

In the News

Taylor Swift, Deepfake Porn and the Law
ByMikeM February 15, 2024February 14, 2024 Reading Time: 3 minutes

As the article explains, there is no federal law against this in the US. There are some state laws, but they’re not very effective. The problem is that we’ve always treated sexual abuse materials as criminal because, as the saying goes, behind every photo is a child being abused. With deepfakes, though, the abuse isn’t happening. So when a teen girl is the subject of deepfake porn, she was never sexually assaulted, so there’s no crime.

There’s a lot of harm, though. In the case of a celebrity, it might be reputational harm. In the case of teenagers, that fake can turn into blackmail, bullying, and all the mental health issues that go along with that. (The same is true of adults, but we know how vulnerable teens are to this and how this too often ends.)

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In the News

Funding cuts to child mental healthcare are bad health and economic policy
ByMikeM February 19, 2026February 18, 2026 Reading Time: 1 minute

As Renée points out, childhood trauma increases the likelihood of a wide range of physical and mental health issues later in life. To the tune of trillions of dollars. The way to address those outcomes is through early interventions for kids. Often, those are available because of grants and government funding. That costs money, but it’s a better alternative to all of the costs associated with treating the long-term impacts of trauma.

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Sharing – Trauma Healing Requires A Certain Amount Of Privilege
ByMikeM October 21, 2021October 21, 2021 Reading Time: 2 minutes

She lists out things like having insurance, having financial security, having a partner and friends from who she doesn’t have to hide her therapy sessions, etc.

As we just talked about yesterday, the reason less than half of all people dealing with mental health issues actually get any treatment at all is because they don’t have all of these things.

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Sharing – Is social media as bad for mental health as we think? New study challenges screen time fears
ByMikeM January 16, 2026 Reading Time: 3 minutes

You can see how it’s not simple. Mental health across a generation of individuals defies every attempt at a one-size-fits-all narrative, because we are not all one size. On the other hand, our brains want a simple narrative because what they want more than anything else is a reason to think that this won’t happen to our kids or us. So we run to simple solutions like bees to a hive. Sometimes that causes us to miss a lot of the details.

Let’s hope we continue to see improvements, but understand that there are a host of things we can and should be doing that don’t involve social media at all.

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Sharing – The Youth Mental Health Crisis Has a Deeper Cause Than Social Media
ByMikeM June 2, 2026June 2, 2026 Reading Time: 1 minute

The kids and phones thing was always an easy excuse, but the real mental health issue is much more complicated:

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Sharing – Why Most Efforts to Address Mental Health Stigma Miss the Mark
ByMikeM April 16, 2025April 16, 2025 Reading Time: 2 minutes

We’ve done a lot of work to eliminate stigma over the years. It’s nearly impossible to argue that there is a significant number of people in the US who don’t know about mental health, or understand that it’s not uncommon. And yet, we still have a stigma problem:

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Sharing – Students Say Mental Health Isn’t Taboo – But Talking to Parents Is

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Funding cuts to child mental healthcare are bad health and economic policy

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Sharing – Trauma Healing Requires A Certain Amount Of Privilege

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Sharing – Why Most Efforts to Address Mental Health Stigma Miss the Mark

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