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This is not the way to help depressed teenagers
Large-scale, ‘light touch’ interventions have backfired.
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The hard truth is that soaring rates of teenage depression and anxiety present a structural problem requiring structural solutions, including the training of a much larger work force of therapists.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PEXELS
Darbe Saxbe
Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, when rates of teenage suicide, anxiety and depression spiked, policymakers around the world have pushed to make mental health resources more broadly available to young people through programming in schools and on social media platforms.
This strategy is well intentioned. Traditional therapy can be expensive and time-consuming; access can be limited. By contrast, large-scale, “light touch” interventions – TikTok offerings from Harvard’s School of Public Health, grief-coping workshops in junior high – aim to reach young people where they are and at relatively low cost.
