Teenage mental health crisis: The kids are not OK

Recently, my suicidal 15-year-old grandson ingested and smoked a cocktail of several drugs. His loving parents found him nonresponsive, with a heart rate near 200 beats per minute. The emergency responders and doctors saved his life. Sadly, it was not his first attempt.

He is now a ward of the state, deemed a danger to himself, and awaits a bed in a facility. Apparently, beds are hard to come by because so many American teenagers — the ones for whom we prescribe many pacifying drugs — are in need of treatment.

I have two friends whose sons have died by suicide. I bet you know someone too. Your son. Your daughter. Maybe your own grandson.

A recent Washington Post article, “Teen girls ‘engulfed’ in violence and trauma, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds,” examines an 89-page report from the CDC on American teens’ behaviors and experiences related to health and well-being. The CDC found that “as we saw in the 10 years before the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health among students overall continues to worsen, with more than 40% of high school students feeling so sad or hopeless that they could not engage in their regular activities for at least two weeks during the previous year — a possible indication of the experience of depressive symptoms. We also saw significant increases in the percentage of youth who seriously considered suicide, made a suicide plan, and attempted suicide.”

Teen girls and LGBTQ teens are especially at risk. The CDC reports that “60% of female students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year and nearly 25% made a suicide plan. … Close to 70% of LGBQ+ students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year and more than 50% had poor mental health during the past 30 days. Almost 25% attempted suicide during the past year.”

Should we blame these alarming statistics on the pandemic — the lack of in-classroom learning and in-person socializing with friends during those years? Isolation is never conducive to mental health. Uncertainty about the future is another contributing factor.

In October 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association declared a national emergency in children’s mental health, citing the serious toll of the pandemic on top of other challenges.

“Young people have endured so much throughout this pandemic and while much of the attention is often placed on its physical health consequences, we cannot overlook the escalating mental health crisis facing our patients,” then-AAP President Lee Savio Beers said.

The organizations cite a pre-pandemic statistic: “Before the pandemic, rates of childhood mental health concerns and suicide had been rising steadily for at least a decade. By 2018, suicide was the second leading cause of death for youths ages 10-24 years.”

Certainly, that is one reason, but I think there is a broader problem at hand, one that is perhaps less quantifiable. The teen years are confusing physically and emotionally. One is neither quite an adult nor still a child. As a kid in 1970s Chicago, I do remember that bewildering stage. But there were differences. Drugs, especially prescription medications, were not as pervasive as today. The stronger strains of cannabis now legal in the majority of the country were still illegal everywhere. Firearms were not easily obtained. As a consequence, school shootings were practically nonexistent. School was a safe space.

And, for me anyway, I was so excited about the endless possibilities that awaited me after high school. I couldn’t wait to get out on my own and put my stamp on the world.

Hope is a drug unto itself. Luckily, I had an ample supply. But what today’s teens face in this broken world is the opposite of hope: a climate in turmoil; a culture of guns and more guns; daily mass shootings; an economic hierarchy that is far from fair; and a failed, underfunded mental health policy that instead of healing funnels our youth into the prison industrial complex.

All of us, teenagers and elders alike, are besieged by our own violent nature. Drugs and guns. Bombs and rubble. Rebuild and destroy. Destroy and rebuild. Although we are divided in our red versus blue politics and the never-ending culture wars, we are united by the anxiety that trickles down through all of us. We are uncertain. About everything, it seems.

My grandson was ultimately released from the hospital and sent home to his parents. No beds were available in any of the adolescent mental facilities. The deadly concoction of stimulants had been flushed out of his young system, and he was declared “stable,” ready to reenter high school, where he easily obtained the drugs that are traded among his peers. He refuses to go to an inpatient drug rehab facility, and he lives in a state where he has that right.

His parents’ goal is simply to keep him alive, no matter what and against all odds.

(If you or a loved one is experiencing mental health difficulties, help is available. Call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. NAMI Chicago can connect you with local resources at 833-626-4244.)