Inside the Adolescent Mental Health Crisis

<p><i>This episode contains discussions about suicide, self-harm and mental health issues.</i></p><p>In decades past, the public health risks teenagers in the United States faced were different. They were externalized risks that were happening in the physical world.</p><p>Now, a new set of risks has emerged.</p><p>In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. And suicide rates, which had been stable from 2000 to 2007 among this group, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018.</p><p>We explore why this mental health crisis has become so widespread, and why many people have been unprepared to handle it.</p><p>Guest: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/matt-richtel">Matt Richtel</a>, a correspondent based in San Francisco for The New York Times.</p><p>Background reading: </p><ul><li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/health/mental-health-crisis-teens.html">Depression, self-harm and suicide are rising</a> among American adolescents. The coronavirus pandemic intensified the decline in mental health among teenagers but predated it.</li><li>Increasingly, anxious and depressed teens are<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/health/teens-psychiatric-drugs.html"> using multiple, powerful psychiatric drugs</a>, many of them untested in adolescents or for use in tandem.</li></ul><p>For more information on today’s episode, visit <a href="http://nytimes.com/thedaily?smid=pc-thedaily">nytimes.com/thedaily</a>. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. </p>