Tag: Mental Health
The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood
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Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to
The Anti-abortion Movement’s Attack on Wanted Pregnancies
In the nearly two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, we’ve witnessed the sober consequences of denying abortions to people who desperately want them. Women have been forced to continue pregnancies that have almost killed them, and given birth to children they can’t afford to care for, children conceived by rape, and children they are simply not ready to have. Now we’re seeing the flip side of the anti-abortion movement’s push to give legal rights to
How a Culture War Over Race Engulfed a School District
On a warm morning in August, 2021, a black Dodge Caravan pulled up to Foxboro Elementary, in North Salt Lake, Utah, and Isabella Tichenor got out, excited for the first day of school. Isabella, who went by Izzy, was ten, and wore overalls that were fashionably pre-ripped at the knees; she loved dancing and playing four square. In a photo that her mother, Brittany, took that day, Izzy stands with her seven-year-old sister, Addison, and their six-year-old brother, Jaxson, all
Dear Therapist: My Husband Had a Relationship With His Best Friend
Dear Therapist,
I have been married to my husband for a year, and we dated for three years before that. He had been married for more than 20 years to his ex-wife, and they have a kid together. I have heard about many of his former girlfriends before his first marriage, and I know he had one girlfriend after his marriage ended and prior to dating me.
He also has a best friend, a man who lives next door to
Public Pools Are a Blessing
In this summer of heat domes and record-breaking global temperatures, finding a place to cool off is more important than ever. You can go to a movie or a museum—if you want to buy a ticket. You can head to an air-conditioned bar—if you don’t have kids who also need to escape the heat. Or you can just stay at home and blast your own air conditioner—a rather lonely prospect, if you ask me.
But there’s a better way to
The Devastating Impact of Elder Financial Abuse
As my father approached his 90s, the daily stack in his mailbox grew—a dozen appeals for donations some days. He was impossibly frugal with himself: frayed canvas shoes and a tattered windbreaker for all seasons. He abhorred wastefulness. He would put down the phone when solicitors called. But the entreaties for money that flooded his mailbox, including many from firefighter, law-enforcement, and veterans’ funds, typically wound up on his desk. Often, generosity eclipsed suspicion, meaning that he sent out a
The Rebranding of MDMA | The New Yorker
When I was in college, I took MDMA with a few friends. It was 2002, and we thought of the drug as Ecstasy, or Molly, and associated it with raves. We weren’t really rave people, so we piled into a dorm-room bathroom and sat together on the floor. We were blissed out on one another’s company, deeply appreciating the cool, smooth nature of the wall, when John, the roommate of one of my friends, opened the door. He seemed unfazed
What COVID Revealed About American Psychiatry
Meanwhile, the institute shed some of its original congressional mandate for treatment and prevention, by giving the job of funding mental-health services to a new federal entity, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. From then on, as one former N.I.M.H. director told me, undertreatment and homelessness were SAMHSA’s responsibilities. As the Human Genome Project launched, and brain-scanning technology leapt forward thanks to functional MRI, pressure to find genetic and brain signatures for psychiatric illnesses grew. Yet, as
The Problem With Comparing Social Media to Big Tobacco
Last month, the surgeon general released a lengthy advisory calling attention to social media and its effects on the mental health of teenagers. Historically, a warning from the surgeon general pointed a big neon sign at an issue that we might not be sure how much to worry about: cigarettes, AIDS, drunk driving. But people are already worried about social media—and they’re acting on those concerns. School districts are suing social-media companies for “knowingly” harming children. Legislators are grilling tech-company
A Trailblazer of Trauma Studies Asks What Victims Really Want
When the Harvard psychiatry professor Judith Herman began her medical training, in the nineteen-sixties, sexual and domestic abuse was still considered a private scourge that victims brought on themselves—if, that is, it was considered at all. Prominent journals were publishing studies like “The Wifebeater’s Wife” (Archives of General Psychiatry, 1964), which attributed marital violence to the “masochistic needs” of battered women. A major textbook put the prevalence of incest at one in a million, which was an underestimate