They are the post-9/11 generation, raised in an era of economic and national insecurity. The biggest variable, then, is the climate in which teens navigate this stage of development. Teen minds have always craved stimulation, and their emotional reactions are by nature urgent and sometimes debilitating. Still, the number of distressed young people is on the rise, experts say, and they are trying to figure out how best to help. For complete access, we encourage you to become a subscriber. It’s also hard to quantify behaviors related to depression and anxiety, like nonsuicidal self-harm, because they are deliberately secretive.įor a limited time, TIME is giving all readers special access to subscriber-only stories. A 2015 report from the Child Mind Institute found that only about 20% of young people with a diagnosable anxiety disorder get treatment. About 30% of girls and 20% of boys–totaling 6.3 million teens–have had an anxiety disorder, according to data from the National Institute of Mental Health.Įxperts suspect that these statistics are on the low end of what’s really happening, since many people do not seek help for anxiety and depression. More than 2 million report experiencing depression that impairs their daily function. In 2015, about 3 million teens ages 12 to 17 had had at least one major depressive episode in the past year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Family financial stress can exacerbate these issues, and studies show that girls are more at risk than boys. It’s a phenomenon that cuts across all demographics–suburban, urban and rural those who are college bound and those who aren’t. Anxiety and depression in high school kids have been on the rise since 2012 after several years of stability. But a closer look paints a far more heartbreaking portrait of why young people are suffering. Sometimes they’re called spoiled or coddled or helicoptered. Self-harm, which some experts say is on the rise, is perhaps the most disturbing symptom of a broader psychological problem: a spectrum of angst that plagues 21st century teens.Īdolescents today have a reputation for being more fragile, less resilient and more overwhelmed than their parents were when they were growing up. She just couldn’t bear seeing the worry on their faces.įor Faith-Ann, cutting was a secret, compulsive manifestation of the depression and anxiety that she and millions of teenagers in the U.S. She loved her parents and knew they’d be supportive if she asked for help. She hid the marks on her torso and arms, and hid the sadness she couldn’t explain and didn’t feel was justified. It would be three years before Faith-Ann, now 20 and a film student in Los Angeles, told her parents about the depth of her distress. “It was like asking me to climb Mount Everest in high heels,” she says.
Sometimes she’d throw up, other times she’d stay home. The pain of the superficial wound was a momentary escape from the anxiety she was fighting constantly, about grades, about her future, about relationships, about everything. “For a while I didn’t want to stop, because it was my only coping mechanism. “It makes the world very quiet for a few seconds,” says Faith-Ann. There was blood–and a sense of deep relief.
SINGAPORE DRAMA 2016 SKIN
Then she sliced into the soft skin near her ribs. It was 2 in the morning, and as her parents slept, she sat on the edge of the tub at her home outside Bangor, Maine, with a metal clip from a pen in her hand. The first time Faith-Ann Bishop cut herself, she was in eighth grade. SHARE Lise Sarfati for TIME Alison Heyland, 18, shown at her home