Today, young people are more likely to report it. This is a good thing, but it raises the question of whether the increases are real, as opposed to people being more likely to report struggling. This report makes it clear that even though that does explain some of the rising rates, it’s not the complete picture. The complete picture includes the fact that young people are struggling more.
It turns out that young people aren’t just being silly when they use AI to help with their mental health. They get real benefits from it, despite all the risks that come along with those benefits:
The kids and phones thing was always an easy excuse, but the real mental health issue is much more complicated:
We talk a lot as a society about youth mental health, but our actions speak much louder, and the message they send is that we only really care about the mental health care of certain kids. Because if we cared about the mental health of all kids, we’d make different choices about making healthcare available and eliminating the actions that harm teens’ mental health.
What more can I say about this? There are clear connections between improved outcomes for kids who are surrounded by supportive adults, and then we created a society that makes it nearly impossible to create that kind of community. The article talks about small acts of cooperation and inclusion, building the network of trusted adults, but how many of us would even know where to start? How many of us don’t trust anyone? How many of us have friends or non-immediate family members around who our kids can trust?
It’s easy to talk about supporting mental health, but is it too much to ask that we fund the resources needed to provide that and allow them to exist in our neighborhoods?
