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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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

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.