Youth Mental Health

Alarming statistics in recent years indicate that mental health problems like depression and anxiety have been skyrocketing among youth. To identify solutions, psychologist and professor Sarah Rose Cavanagh interviews a roster of experts across the country who are dedicating their lives to working with young people to help them actualize their goals, and highlights voices of college students from a range of diverse backgrounds.

Every morning you wake up it feels like someone else is out there to hit you with an all-new level of stress and pressure. The teenage years shouldn’t be like this—and you have the power to change it! You have to be the best in class and in extracurricular activities. You need to be the model child for your parents and the rock for your friends. You should dress the part, have the followers, and do it all with a smile!

Youth of the Nation is not another book written by casual observers or researchers attempting to create solutions based upon statistics surrounding the youth mental health crisis in our country. Statistics are extremely helpful to give tangible proof of the problems and to alert the public of the dire need to make improvements to our current systems. However, the mental health problems our youth are facing have proven to be too complex and nuanced for conventional approaches. This book shares what over a thousand teens and I have created and successfully been applying for 14 years.

This advisory calls attention to the growing concerns about the effects of social media on youth mental health. It explores and describes the current evidence on the positive and negative impacts of social media on children and adolescents, some of the primary areas for mental health and well-being concerns, and opportunities for additional research to help understand the full scope and scale of social media’s impact.