You are ahead of your time! Thank you for this important work. I have been baffled to watch every human emotion become a diagnosis. Even Bill Maher has commented on this. What's been done to this generation is just sad.
Amen to everything you said! I believe though that even high school is too young for social media, and that kids should not have a smart phone until at least then. I also wish the schools would do their part, as you suggested. Not only later start times, but not having all their assignments on the screen could make a huge difference in their health, for so many reasons. Parents have very little control once the kids are mandated to use a computer for school. There is no need for this; kids don't learn more from screens, and assignments can be shifted back to paper - it's just that educational technology companies make too much money from online learning, and the schools have been sucked into the idea that kids need to be on screens.
Sadly, it may be difficult to reverse what has been done. Adolescence is already very difficult and awkward without having the quantity of information now available about what others think of or compare you to available. Some kids will be fine, but many probably will not emerge resilient and unscathed. I remember shortly before stopping watching television, a plastic surgeon on Entertainment Tonight or some such studying her in order to "correct" his Californian wife's face. This is madness armed with knives and stimulated by inevitable comparison where the photogenic congregate. Return to paper may be a hard sell despite its many virtues of which stillness is one.
I would encourage you to interview Dr. Alok Kanonjia on screen time and how parents can get their teens to a better usage of their mobile devices. He runs a company called healthyGamer.gg that focuses on emotional intelligence for teens and young adults that very well fit the groups of people Adressed here
This report gets a D+ because it egregiously omitted the most common and devastating root cause of adolescent mental health crisis: family dysfunction, familial abuse (emotional / psychological / physical and spiritual) and neglect.
In psychodynamic and trauma-informed frameworks, the family is not peripheral—it is central. Yet here, the word “abuse” is never used. The text avoids: ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) research, which has profoundly shaped how we understand the origins of psychological and somatic illness. Attachment trauma, which underlies many anxiety, mood, and personality disorders. Developmental trauma, often misdiagnosed as ADHD, ODD, or even bipolar disorder in youth.
The irony is sharp: in a piece about overpathologizing normal behavior, they underpathologize the most malignant forces not visible to the pediatrician’s eye—the covert abuse behind closed doors.
Consider how many adolescents: Live in domestically violent homes. Have narcissistic, addicted, or untreated mentally ill parents. Are scapegoated, gaslighted, or emotionally parentified. Experience religious or ideological control, covert incest, or shame-based upbringing.
To frame adolescent distress as caused by phones and sugar while ignoring these lived realities is a form of epistemic violence. It fails the most vulnerable—and risks blaming them for symptoms that are appropriate responses to chronic harm.
Misdiagnosis continues: If we don’t name abuse, we keep mislabeling trauma as depression or anxiety—and medicating it, which suppresses survival signals.
Therapeutic misdirection: Teens are sent to therapy alone, without addressing the broader family system. No amount of CBT or exposure therapy can solve living with a violent or narcissistic parent.
Perpetuation of societal myths: That adolescents are “just hormonal” or “overdramatic.” That their distress is overreaction, not underrecognized injury.
A serious piece on SSRIs and adolescent distress must grapple with:
Trauma-informed care: recognizing that many teens are not safe at home, and this must be central to diagnosis and intervention.
Family systems models: such as Bowenian or Structural Family Therapy, which ask what role is the child being forced to play?
Mandated reporting, school intervention, and systemic barriers to actually protecting abused teens.
The fact that some parents demand SSRIs for their child, not to help the child, but to mute the child’s protest.
You are ahead of your time! Thank you for this important work. I have been baffled to watch every human emotion become a diagnosis. Even Bill Maher has commented on this. What's been done to this generation is just sad.
Amen to everything you said! I believe though that even high school is too young for social media, and that kids should not have a smart phone until at least then. I also wish the schools would do their part, as you suggested. Not only later start times, but not having all their assignments on the screen could make a huge difference in their health, for so many reasons. Parents have very little control once the kids are mandated to use a computer for school. There is no need for this; kids don't learn more from screens, and assignments can be shifted back to paper - it's just that educational technology companies make too much money from online learning, and the schools have been sucked into the idea that kids need to be on screens.
Sadly, it may be difficult to reverse what has been done. Adolescence is already very difficult and awkward without having the quantity of information now available about what others think of or compare you to available. Some kids will be fine, but many probably will not emerge resilient and unscathed. I remember shortly before stopping watching television, a plastic surgeon on Entertainment Tonight or some such studying her in order to "correct" his Californian wife's face. This is madness armed with knives and stimulated by inevitable comparison where the photogenic congregate. Return to paper may be a hard sell despite its many virtues of which stillness is one.
I would encourage you to interview Dr. Alok Kanonjia on screen time and how parents can get their teens to a better usage of their mobile devices. He runs a company called healthyGamer.gg that focuses on emotional intelligence for teens and young adults that very well fit the groups of people Adressed here
This report gets a D+ because it egregiously omitted the most common and devastating root cause of adolescent mental health crisis: family dysfunction, familial abuse (emotional / psychological / physical and spiritual) and neglect.
In psychodynamic and trauma-informed frameworks, the family is not peripheral—it is central. Yet here, the word “abuse” is never used. The text avoids: ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) research, which has profoundly shaped how we understand the origins of psychological and somatic illness. Attachment trauma, which underlies many anxiety, mood, and personality disorders. Developmental trauma, often misdiagnosed as ADHD, ODD, or even bipolar disorder in youth.
The irony is sharp: in a piece about overpathologizing normal behavior, they underpathologize the most malignant forces not visible to the pediatrician’s eye—the covert abuse behind closed doors.
Consider how many adolescents: Live in domestically violent homes. Have narcissistic, addicted, or untreated mentally ill parents. Are scapegoated, gaslighted, or emotionally parentified. Experience religious or ideological control, covert incest, or shame-based upbringing.
To frame adolescent distress as caused by phones and sugar while ignoring these lived realities is a form of epistemic violence. It fails the most vulnerable—and risks blaming them for symptoms that are appropriate responses to chronic harm.
Misdiagnosis continues: If we don’t name abuse, we keep mislabeling trauma as depression or anxiety—and medicating it, which suppresses survival signals.
Therapeutic misdirection: Teens are sent to therapy alone, without addressing the broader family system. No amount of CBT or exposure therapy can solve living with a violent or narcissistic parent.
Perpetuation of societal myths: That adolescents are “just hormonal” or “overdramatic.” That their distress is overreaction, not underrecognized injury.
A serious piece on SSRIs and adolescent distress must grapple with:
Trauma-informed care: recognizing that many teens are not safe at home, and this must be central to diagnosis and intervention.
Family systems models: such as Bowenian or Structural Family Therapy, which ask what role is the child being forced to play?
Mandated reporting, school intervention, and systemic barriers to actually protecting abused teens.
The fact that some parents demand SSRIs for their child, not to help the child, but to mute the child’s protest.