Children In Crisis: Coping with Anxiety, Depression and Suicide | Guests: Brandy Vega and Charle Peck

In this episode we discusses our children in crisis: coping with anxiety, depression and suicide. We are living in extremely challenging times with the Covid-19 pandemic, civil unrest, political strife and the increasing mental health affects of social media and gaming.

You’ll hear a message from Brad Hunstable who recently lost his twelve-your-old son Hayden to suicide. Our first guest is Brandy Vega, founder of Good Deed Revolution, owner of Vega Media Studios and single mother of three children. Our second guest is Charle Peck, educational and mental health professional, mother of three boys and host of the Advancing Humanity Podcast.

 Since the late 2000s, the mental health of teens and young adults in the U.S. has declined dramatically. That’s the broad conclusion of a new study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Between 2009 and 2017, rates of depression among kids ages 14 to 17 increased by more than 60%, the study found. The increases were nearly as steep among those ages 12 to 13 (47%) and 18 to 21 (46%), and rates roughly doubled among those ages 20 to 21. In 2017—the latest year for which federal data are available—more than one in eight Americans ages 12 to 25 experienced a major depressive episode, the study found.

 The same trends held when the researchers analyzed the data on suicides, attempted suicides and “serious psychological distress”—a term applied to people who score high on a test that measures feelings of sadness, nervousness and hopelessness. Among young people, rates of suicidal thoughts, plans and attempts all increased significantly, and in some cases more than doubled, between 2008 and 2017, the study found. These findings were based on data collected from more than 600,000 people by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an annual nationwide mental-health survey conducted by a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

 “I think this is quite a wake-up call,” says Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a professor of psychology and education at the University of Southern California (who was not affiliated with the new study). “These findings are coming together with other kinds of evidence that show we’re not supporting our adolescents in developmentally appropriate ways.” One of the study’s authors agrees. “There is an overwhelming amount of data from many different sources, and it all points in the same direction: more mental health issues among American young people,” says Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of iGen, a book about how technology affects the lives of young people.

 What’s causing today’s young people so much anguish? “This is always a tough question to answer, as we can’t prove for sure what the causes are,” Twenge says. “But there was one change that impacted the lives of young people more than older people, and that was the growth of smartphones and digital media like social media, texting and gaming.” While older adults also use these technologies, “their adoption among younger people was faster and more complete, and the impact on their social lives much larger,” Twenge says. Increased stress, anxiety, depression and suicide affects millions of families today.

Brandy Vega: http://www.VegaMediaStudios.com  http://www.GoodDeedRevolution.org

Charle Peck: http://www.AdvancingHumanityPodcast.com

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