
Jeff Yalden – Mental Health Speaker for Teens & Parents.
If you know of a teen that is suicidal, please have them visit www.NotTheSolution.com and encourage them to seek help immediately!But the situation isn’t so different in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., where a separate cluster of teen suicides in recent years forced educators and parents to re-examine the messages they give teenagers, intentionally and unintentionally, about what’s expected of them and what’s needed to get ahead in this world. It’s not so different in Chicago’s western suburbs, where a high school teacher recently pulled me aside and, in a pained whisper, insisted that the number of advanced-placement classes that local students feel compelled to take and the number of hospitalizations for depression rise in tandem.

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If you know of a teen that is suicidal, please have them visit www.NotTheSolution.com and encourage them to seek help immediately!“The suicides are tragic, but they are at the pointy head of the pyramid, the tippy top,” she said. “Beneath them is a larger number of kids who are really struggling and beneath them is an even larger number of kids who feel an amount of stress and pressure that they shouldn’t be made to and that’s untenable.” THE local media has been rife with commentary, from many perspectives, about the mental health of Palo Alto teenagers. Here is what Carolyn Walworth, a junior at Palo Alto High School, recently wrote: “As I sit in my room staring at the list of colleges I’ve resolved to try to get into, trying to determine my odds of getting into each, I can’t help but feel desolate.” She confessed to panic attacks in class, to menstrual periods missed as a result of exhaustion. “We are not teenagers,” she added. “We are lifeless bodies in a system that breeds competition, hatred, and discourages teamwork and genuine learning.” Adam Strassberg, a psychiatrist and the father of two Palo Alto teenagers, wrote that while many Palo Alto parents are “wealthy and secure beyond imagining,” they’re consumed by fear of losing that perch or failing to bequeath it to their kids. “Maintaining and advancing insidiously high educational standards in our children is a way to soothe this anxiety,” he said. He made these observations apart from the suicides, for which, he emphasized, “There is no single cause.” He recommended lightening children’s schedules, limiting the number of times that they take the SAT, lessening the message that it’s Stanford or bust. “I will never be neutral on this issue,” he wrote. “The ‘Koala Dad’ is the far better parent than the ‘Tiger Mom.’ ” What he was saying — and what’s obvious, but warrants repeating — is that ushering children toward a bright future means getting them there in one piece. There’s a fresh awareness of that here, and perhaps a new receptiveness to some words of his that should echo far beyond Palo Alto: “Want the best for your child, not for your child to be the best.”