Is She Right?

 The Times had a researcher from Oxford talk about teenaged anxiety and depression among teens. As someone who has seen in very many forms this phenomenon - including serious clinical cases - I think she's hit on something.

As she very careful explains (but what will probably be ignored in the coming backlash), there really is anxiety and depression, and it does seem to be growing among young people. I will say that I definitely suffered from depression in my teens and twenties, and every now and again, I have a bout of mild depression. What I did not have is much framework or license to "be depressed." It was stigmatized and that's bad. What's more, I never had suicidal ideation or impulses to self-harm. I was angry - typical of depression in men - and drank. I played relatively violent sports.

In the end, mild depression and anxiety are likely simply part of being human. And in my experience, having free time was like throwing fuel on the fire. Once I really had a full time job, once I had a job that gave me purpose, those episodes got further and further apart and shorter and shorter. Some of it is that I know I will come out the other side; it's not forever. 

Kids don't know that. They can see transient episodes of anxiety and depression for being transient. Are you anxious meeting new people? No kidding. Are you sometimes really sad? Yeah, that happens.

The question the woman in the video above raises is how much have we created a system where we rush to diagnose and pathologize what is really part of the human experience? And - this is important - when we do that, we bleed the urgency from those with more significant mental health issues. As she puts it, "If everything is an illness, then nothing is."

It's Mental Health Awareness Month, and she had to know this would be a controversial thing to say. I do think that this is an underrated way that social media is making our kids mentally unwell.