How Do We Fix The Mental Health Crisis Among Affluent Teens?

[Anonymous]

What you are describing is not inevitable and it does not exist in every school. Not even every school in this area.

[Anonymous]

I think it starts young. Child is struggling a little in school...rush to get a diagnosis and meds. Child is struggling emotionally...rush to the shrink and meds. Parents are always trying to fix things instead of being patient and teaching coping mechanisms.

[Anonymous]

Poorer kids have the same mental health problems but who has money to help them? Not their parents. Also their parents are busy working just to make ends meet. My mom was a single parent who worked two jobs. My brother was very depressed and tried to commit suicide. She felt tremendous guilt that she wasn’t around enough to notice the changes in him.

[Anonymous]

Schools are not mental health professionals and replacement for parents/family live. Look within.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think parental style or social factors alone are the cause. I suspect it’s something else, though I don’t know what. Because depression among teens is so endemic and crisis level and cuts across so many places, SES levels, and has become so bad so suddenly, I don’t think we can attribute it just to affluence or pressure, though those are tempting targets.

I agree

[Anonymous]

Mental health issues cost money. There's a reason that more rich and UMC kids are in therapy

[Anonymous]

Show them some teens with real problems, like meth-addict parents, babies from being raped by their fathers, and a life fated to be spent in minimum wage jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mental health issues cost money. There's a reason that more rich and UMC kids are in therapy

Much of that therapy happens to be: Yeah, I can see how your parents are too busy for you.

Beware.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was reading this article in The Atlantic about the suicides at Palo Alto High School:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/

It seems like living in a pressure cooker full of wealthy, well-educated parents in a highly academic environment is a major factor in poor mental health among teenagers. I remember reading a sociological study showing that depression, anxiety, and drug abuse among teenagers plotted to their SES status was like a horseshoe -- most common among wealthy/UMC and poor teens (for very different reasons), but least common among the middle-middle class.

Anecdotally, from DD's private, it seems like almost half of the kids we know are on medications and see a therapist or psychiatrist on a regular basis. The stress and pressure just seem nuts to me, and the constant judgement and competition seem unhealthy for teenagers.

Are there any ways that we as parents can fix this? Pull our kids out of private and put them in an economically diverse public? Move to the Midwest? Insist that our kids don't have to take the most rigorous classes available to them? Be okay with them going to UMD or a SLAC ranked below the Top 20 rather than an Ivy? Put them in therapy with an intense cycle of medications?

I think wealthier families have the time and means to be able to diagnose their troubled kids. There are plenty of kids suffering in low in middle income families and guess what the parents don’t have the time to take off of work or the money to diagnose it and the kids know that so they just suffer through it. It doesn’t get diagnosed and added into these so called statistics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I attended a "pressure-cooker" private school 35 years ago, but I wasn't aware of anything like the mental health issues that seem to exist nowadays (though of course drug use, and mental health problems existed). I wonder why things are worse?

35 years ago, you could do ok in high school, attend a prestigious college if your parents could afford it (a job or modest loans if now) and expect to graduate with a well paying job. Now the fight to get into those schools requires kids to be nearly perfect and that modest loan is now decades of debt. That great job after graduation is also a crap shoot. We had generations where kids could expect to do as well as or better than their parents and now we're seeing that eroding

[Anonymous]

Money

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mental health issues cost money. There's a reason that more rich and UMC kids are in therapy

Much of that therapy happens to be: Yeah, I can see how your parents are too busy for you.

Beware.

They care deeply about the child's problems so long as the parents can afford for them to care

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was reading this article in The Atlantic about the suicides at Palo Alto High School:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/

It seems like living in a pressure cooker full of wealthy, well-educated parents in a highly academic environment is a major factor in poor mental health among teenagers. I remember reading a sociological study showing that depression, anxiety, and drug abuse among teenagers plotted to their SES status was like a horseshoe -- most common among wealthy/UMC and poor teens (for very different reasons), but least common among the middle-middle class.

Anecdotally, from DD's private, it seems like almost half of the kids we know are on medications and see a therapist or psychiatrist on a regular basis. The stress and pressure just seem nuts to me, and the constant judgement and competition seem unhealthy for teenagers.

Are there any ways that we as parents can fix this? Pull our kids out of private and put them in an economically diverse public? Move to the Midwest? Insist that our kids don't have to take the most rigorous classes available to them? Be okay with them going to UMD or a SLAC ranked below the Top 20 rather than an Ivy? Put them in therapy with an intense cycle of medications?

I think wealthier families have the time and means to be able to diagnose their troubled kids. There are plenty of kids suffering in low in middle income families and guess what the parents don’t have the time to take off of work or the money to diagnose it and the kids know that so they just suffer through it. It doesn’t get diagnosed and added into these so called statistics.

I will add do you have any idea how long it takes to even get a diagnosis of even a learning Disability not to mention some form of depression or anxiety. It’s a long wait to even get on a wait list for psychologists that do the testing or who are willing to see new patients. That’s just for regular psychologists that don’t deal with insurance. Forget about trying to get into a psychologist that takes insurance. I have friends that tried for six months and still could not get into anyone. Guest what both families are lower income. Wealthier friends were able to pay full cost and get in sooner because they pay out of pocket to someone that does not accept insurance. Most families in the us can not afford to do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Show them some teens with real problems, like meth-addict parents, babies from being raped by their fathers, and a life fated to be spent in minimum wage jobs.

Sure, that'll cheer them up and give them a better world view. /s

Lots of kids who are struggling are not struggling solely due to their own plight. They are down about the state of the world, about the bleak picture of the future adults around them are painting while simultaneously telling these kids it is the duty/role/destiny to become super-advocates and fix it all and make the world a better place. So, when you show them all those kids with bigger problems, you are piling on because the message is -- use your privilege and education to fix this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it starts young. Child is struggling a little in school...rush to get a diagnosis and meds. Child is struggling emotionally...rush to the shrink and meds. Parents are always trying to fix things instead of being patient and teaching coping mechanisms.

+ 1,000. The kneejerk reaction to get drugged is uniquely American. Many of these drugs actually INCREASE suicidal tendencies. But parents often ignore the tiny print warnings provided by big pharma and mandated by federal law.

The drug pushing by pharmaceutical corporations and the AMA is egregious. People who invest in this scam are ruthless.