Crisis. Fatalistic. Overwhelming.
That's how some experts say the current national conversation about youth mental health is framed — and, contrary to its intent, that perspective is harming the ability to find solutions that help teens better cope with mental health issues.
They spoke during a news conference on youth mental health hosted by the FrameWorks Institute, a nonprofit that studies how people think about social issues.
One of the biggest challenges to creating communities that are better overall for young people's mental health is the very way the topic is approached, says Nat Kendall-Taylor, executive director of the FrameWorks Institute and a psychological anthropologist.
Conversations tend to focus on how individual decisions students make can affect their mental health, she says, rather than how systemic issues and the environments teens live in contribute to stress in adolescents. They also tend to be fatalistic and focused on the crisis nature of the problem, Kendall-Taylor adds, describing teens as a kind of “Other” social group that is separated from its communities.
These factors form a “toxic trio” that makes people feel like the problem is insurmountable, she explains, and then they disengage. That creates a challenge in getting people to support changes and the use of public resources for adolescent mental health support.
“It’s become a culture war issue, it’s become an existential issue,” Kendall-Taylor says, “and what’s interesting is the way that that narrative that’s focused on crisis and urgency doesn’t really leave room or space for solutions.”
What motivates the adolescent brain?
Andrew Fuligni is a professor of psychology and director of the Adolescent Development Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles.
According to him, scientific understanding of the adolescent brain is very different from what it was ten years ago and what the adolescent mind needs is connection, discovery and exploration. The motivation and reward system is very active and produces higher levels of dopamine than those observed in childhood or in adulthood.
“This gives us energy to explore the world and figure out not only how to fit into the family, but also into the social world, the community, etc.,” Fuligni says. “We are designed to take risks during adolescence in order to learn. It is important for adolescents to take those risks safely and with support, whether at school or in the community, so they can figure out how they can make a good contribution to the world around them.”
Fuligni says the public continues to underestimate the importance of sleep, which is critical for brain development, for adolescent mental health. Current evidence suggests there is a much stronger connection between sleep quality and mental health, she says, than with another factor often cited as the root of the problem: social media use.
“Many scientists believe that the focus on social media has led us to not pay attention to these other critical factors that may be driving these kinds of things,” Fuligni says.
But teens don't necessarily control whether their environment is set up for a good night's sleep, Fuligni says. The amount of noise or light pollution present, or whether there's tension in the home, are factors that can affect whether teens get enough rest.
“Sleep also shows very significant inequalities in American society,” she says. “If you look at economic and ethnic inequalities, sleep will follow all aspects of inequality across the country. Light pollution, overcrowding, and parents’ work schedules are all factors that contribute to poorer sleep at home.”
Changing the narrative
Kendall-Taylor says a solution the FrameWork Institute recommends Addressing the public disconnect around youth mental health requires a shift in focus from an individual problem to one that focuses on how our environment shapes us.
Educating people about how adolescent development works is key to getting acceptance of issues that will improve adolescent well-being, she adds. There is also a need to steer conversations about youth mental health from crisis to solutions, and to talk more about what positive and resilient mental health experiences look like.
“We need to be careful that the young people in our stories are not passive recipients, but active agents in mental health experiences,” says Kendall-Taylor, “so that we don’t fall into this dynamic of ‘they need us to save them,’ which is a trap we often fall into.”
The view from a school district
Kent Pekel has spent a lot of time thinking about how stress on young people's mental health affects students' success in class. As superintendent in Rochester, Minnesota, he supported an overhaul of the district's transportation system so that high school students could get more sleep with a The start time of the school day is at 8:50 am.
Before that change, the district tried to convince high school students to go to bed earlier by promoting “the benefits of sleep.” The campaign was unsuccessful.
“The benefits of sleep were not popular with high school students,” says Pekel, “but recently, as part of our mental health strategy, we started talking about well-being and health.”
Pekel says she feels she is living through a second major paradigm shift in education. The first was the move to implement early childhood education across the system, rather than seeing it as a niche practice.
Pekel says it was the focus on the importance of early childhood education, similar to what Kendall-Taylor describes for youth mental health, that helped it become more widely adopted. In the case of mental health, she adds, the gap between what students need and what the education system can provide is even greater than what families faced at the beginning of the early childhood education movement.
While it’s positive that students, parents and educators are more aware of the importance of mental health these days, Pekel is also seeing more families willing to keep kids home if they’re experiencing anxiety symptoms. Like others across the country, he says his district is grappling with a chronic absenteeism problem. Educators like him need help differentiating between when students are experiencing true mental health issues and when they’re just going through the typical challenges that come with being a teenager.
“Not being in school has catastrophic consequences for the ability to learn, and we're seeing parents using terminology that implies it's actually rooted in a mental health issue,” Pekel says, “and sometimes our social workers, counselors and school psychologists say, 'No, this is just a child who needs a lot of support to get to class.'”
