Skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression in adolescents. Medical groups declaring a “national emergency”. The general surgeon calling for a “whole of society” response to a “devastating” mental health crisis among young people.
By all indications, children today are in dire straits, making Mental Health Awareness Month, which began May 1, even more urgent. But in the opinion video above, Lucy Foulkes, an academic psychologist at the University of Oxford, says the problem may not be the same. be a lack of awareness but rather too much.
Amid enormous societal pressure to destigmatize mental illness and encourage more conversations about emotions, young people have been inundated with information about mental health on social media and elsewhere. But much of this information is unreliable and counterproductive.
“I am deeply concerned that this craze for awareness,” Foulkes says, “ironically worsens their mental health.”
