Shonda Moralis MSW, LCSW

• It can be easy to allow the fear of failure to hold us back.
• Most of us are either risk-averse or risk-takers. It’s vital to know where you fall on the continuum.
• There are simpleThere are simple steps you can practice to make wise, well-thought-out decisions.

“Do not fear mistakes: There are none.”

Easy for me to say? Well, no, not really. Even though one of my favorite personal mistakes* ultimately led to the successful publishing of my first book, this Miles Davis quote, which is posted visibly in my office, is a reminder that there is always a valuable lesson in our perceived mistakes—even the wretchedly painful ones that in the moment appear cataclysmic and irreversible. This is not to say that we would never alter some of our decisions, given the retrospective opportunity. But in reality, the best we can do is learn from our missteps, make amends if necessary, and usher our newfound knowledge into the present, allowing it to inform our future with wisdom.

The words we choose to describe our blunders matter. Our minds often transform a mere thought into a hard fact, often without our consent. A simple “mistake” can easily morph into a big fat failure if we aren’t cautious about how we perceive it. Which is why I have long bristled at the word failure, finding it too finite, too definite, and much too all-or-nothing in its formulation. And because I have repeatedly observed how “failure” paralyzes us in an unending cycle of fearing more of the same, I am opposed to even permitting it full-word status outside of mental quotation marks and often refer to it as “the other F-word.” It is infinitely more productive, motivating, and sanity preserving to practice reframing the concepts of “mistakes” and “failures” as the potential learning opportunities they are.

When it comes to risking failure, each of us falls somewhere on the continuum from cripplingly risk averse to consummate adrenaline junkie. Ideally, we want to find ourselves in the center, making wise, deliberate decisions without allowing fear to immobilize us.

In my youngerIn my younger years, perfectionist tendencies and the fear of failure kept me playing it safe most of the time. As I have grown older, I have learned to nudge, and occasionally (lovingly) shove, myself more toward the center. As with learning any new skill, this was initially frightening, but it has become less so with practice. Despite my earlier risk aversion, I have nevertheless managed to experience my share of setbacks. It’s just as important, if not more so, to discuss our losses than to underscore our wins. Success is decidedly not linear. Colin Jost of Saturday Night Live said it better than I ever could: “We have to remember that progress isn’t just a straight line upward. . . . It’s a weird roller coaster where sometimes you’re screaming for joy and other times you’re barfing in your own face.” Pretty much.

Here are simple steps to help mitigate the risk and recover from the inevitable setback

1. Designate where you fall on the risk-taking continuum:

Do you tend to play it safe, hang back, and think long and hard about decisions? Do you often regret not having jumped in and experienced adventures, large or small? Or do you find yourself frequently regretting impulsive decisions? Are you regularly drawn to that addictive adrenaline rush from just going for it? Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, reserve judgment about who you are or how you have behaved in the past. This is not about self-criticism but about kind awareness. Self-acceptance must first occur before we can create any mindful positive change.

If you tend to be risk averse, your next step is to work on stepping out of your comfort zone in tiny, manageable ways. Granted, we may not make as many missteps if we are always playing it safe, but without some risk we cannot live up to our full potential and end up stunting opportunities for growth.

If you are more of a natural risk taker, your objective is to stop and notice your bodily sensations before you leap, paying attention to what they may be communicating and honing your ability to notice and follow your intuition over time.

2. If you are deliberating about whether to take a leap:

Regardless of whether you are risk averse or risk adoring, first get quiet in order to listen to your body, as it provides valuable information. You must physically stop to do this. Briefly scan through the body from head to toe, staying curious about any sensations and making mental notes of what you observe.

If it is difficult to notice any sensations at all, do not be discouraged. Each time you practice this mindful break, you increase your familiarity with your own unique body sensations, becoming more in tune with what is normal—and what is not—for you. Typically, we experience sensations tied to emotions somewhere between the head and the stomach or lower back. For example, you might feel muscle tension in your head, neck, or back. Perhaps it feels as if an elephant has taken a seat atop your chest or butterflies are trapped in your stomach. These unpleasant sensations commonly signal an unhealthy, unwise choice. Conversely, ask yourself if there is a general sense of ease, calm, and relaxed muscles. This usually means you are proceeding in the right direction.

Even if you are skilled at noticing sensations, it isn’t always clear what they represent. Or, as in my case, we recognize the sensations but doubt the message out of fear, avoidance, or denial. Since we know that attempting something new often also entails some level of fear, our goal is to distinguish between natural trepidation (take the risk) and our intuition screaming NO! (consider turning back). This, too, requires practice and never entirely becomes foolproof. Provided we gather facts and heed our intuition, we can be assured that we have done our best in that moment, whether we succeed immediately or not.

3. If you are recovering from a “mistake”:

Take a deep breath and offer yourself compassion for the suffering. Remind yourself that you are not alone; everyone has a similar story to share. I know this may be irritating to hear right now, but it will ring true later. Regardless of whether you did not notice informative body sensations, interpreted them wrong, or chose not to heed them, there is always a lesson to be learned—even if it is not immediately clear. Sometimes the best you can do is breathe, put one foot in front of the other, refuse to let fear keep you down, and use what you’ve learned to wisely, kindly inform your next decision.

Adapted and excerpted from Don’t Forget to Breathe: 5-Minute Mindfulness for Busy Women (The Experiment Publishing, 2022).

References

*Read all about it in the full version in Don’t Forget to Breathe.

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We are often inundated by fear. Fear is doled out by politicians to influence people. Advertisers peddle fear to keep people buying their products and services. Some media outlets lead with it to build audiences and sell more ad space. Doomsayers, prognosticators, and conspiracy theorists spread it to gather followers and create audiences for their products and services.

Every day in the media we are exposed to negative news and scary stories that make us anxious or worse including:

Political Fear: government corruption, political division, civil unrest, political violence.

War Fear: nuclear war, biological war, EMP attack (electromagnetic pulse), terrorism, WWIII.

Health Fear: disease, injury, inadequate healthcare, poor access to healthcare, high costs.

Financial Fear: economic collapse, inflation, recession, stock market crash, high-interest rates.

Environmental Fear: air and water pollution, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, droughts, wildfires.

Employment Fear: layoffs, job loss to automation, not having enough money to pay bills, debt.

Crime Fear: scams, identity theft, home invasion, mugging, carjacking, mass shooting.

The simplest solution is to tune out the fear by turning off your TV and avoiding the news. When you can’t avoid negative news, creativity can help you deal with fear. When you develop your creative thinking skills you may begin to see things in different ways including new paths away from that which is scaring you.

There are six keys to developing your creativity. Each of them is necessary in order to solve problems and generate new ideas. Maybe you will create a new plan to end corruption, a new technique to clean the environment, a new method for increasing prosperity, or a new strategy to keep people safe. Some of these keys are skills while others are habits, but all of them contribute to a creative mind.

6 Keys to Creativity

1. Using curiosity creatively is when your inquisitiveness guides you to look for new connections or when you combine two or more existing concepts into a new idea. Curiosity is wondering what a different world might look like and then thinking about how you might achieve it. Perhaps it’s a world that doesn’t have so many alarming issues in it; where people unite in peaceful consensual exchange instead of engaging in force or fraud.

2. Questioning authority is all about challenging the status quo. Critical thinking is one of the first steps in creativity because it encourages you to question the way things are done. You might ask questions like: “Why do we do things this way?” “Wouldn’t it be better if we tried doing it another way?” Creativity develops your critical thinking skills, so you are less likely to be troubled and bamboozled by charlatans.

3. Trying new things such as exposing yourself to new experiences and different viewpoints. By opening your mind to new stimuli, you literally lay down new neural pathways in your brain. It’s called neuroplasticity, and when you learn or experience something new you create new connections between brain cells and open new channels of thought. Then, when you are confronted by problems (scary or not), you have that extra brainpower and data ready to assist you.

4. Taking risks along with a willingness to break rules can reveal less daunting or more positive probabilities. The people on Maui who were willing to break the rules and drive around the police roadblocks survived the 2023 fire. There is an old proverb that says, “No risk — no reward.” It’s true; the biggest risk is never taking one, because without risk you won’t find alternative options and opportunities.

5. Getting a different perspective by learning to look at things in different ways will enable you to see new ways of doing things. It can take some practice to develop a habit of viewing things from a different perspective. However, until you do, there are dozens of techniques for stimulating it artificially. My favorite is to identify a problem and then ask, “What would I do if the opposite were true?” By changing the paradigm, you abandon old assumptions and methodologies, which then forces you to consider new models and frameworks.

6. Using imagination is the heart of creativity. It is natural to imagine that something can be nicer, faster, stronger, cleaner, tastier, and safer. Imagination enables us to create a better world to live in (or help us solve the problems we are dealing with). It’s also a great way to stop worrying and overcome fear. The trick is to replace negative thinking with positive thinking. Visualize a better outcome and focus on it daily (meditate on it or daydream about it) and then observe what your creative mind does with it.

Developing these skills and habits can liberate you from fear because they empower you to do more and be more.

Creativity Helps You Recognize Alternatives

I’ve noticed lately that news stories of food shortages and other products becoming unavailable have been making people nervous and causing some to start hoarding. Creativity is the best cure for fear of scarcity. Your ingenuity helps you see alternatives. There are always substitutes available if you are open-minded. When you engage your creative brain and look for other options you will be amazed at how resourceful you can be and what you will discover.

I have found that the excitement of getting into the creative process, in and of itself, tends to erase fear. Change doesn’t seem so scary when you realize that it is enhancing your adaptability skills which are extremely important in the digital age. Embracing creativity makes you more mindful; it enables you to live in the present and focus on what you can do right now so that you don’t freak out about the future.

Creativity Builds Self-Confidence

Finally, when you begin to successfully use your creative thinking skills, it will increase your self-confidence. You will know that when a difficult or frightening situation occurs, you will be able to handle it.

References

2023 Chapman University Survey of American Fears https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/research-centers/babbie-center/survey…

How Novel Activities Support Neuroplasticity:

1. Vemuri P, Lesnick TG, Przybelski SA, et al. Association of lifetime intellectual enrichment with cognitive decline in the older population. JAMA Neurol. 2014;71(8):1017-24. doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2014.963

2. Kaczmarek B. Current views on neuroplasticity: What is new and what is old?. Acta Neuropsychologica. 2020;18(1):1-14. doi:10.5604/01.3001.0013.8808

3. Association of Lifetime Intellectual Enrichment with Cognitive Decline in the Older Population. Prashanthi Vemuri, PhD1; Timothy G. Lesnick, MS2; Scott A. Przybelski, BS2; et al Mary Machulda, PhD, LP3; David S. Knopman, MD4; Michelle M. Mielke, PhD2; Rosebud O. Roberts, MB, ChB2,4; Yonas E. Geda, MD3,5,6; Walter A. Rocca, MD, MPH2,4; Ronald C. Petersen, PhD, MD4; Clifford R. Jack Jr, MD1 JAMA Neurol. 2014;71(8):1017-1024. doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2014.963, August 2014

4. C. Lappe, S.C. Herholz, L.J. Trainor, C. Pantev, J. Neurosci. 28 (2008) 9632–9639.

5. C. Pantev, C. Lappe, S.C. Herholz, L. Trainor, Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 1169 (2009) 143–150.

6. Q. Li, X. Wang, S. Wang, Y. Xie, X. Li, Y. Xie, S. Li, Hum. Brain Mapp. 39 (2018) 2098–2110.

7. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/neuroplasticity

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Mental health conditions are common. One in five U.S. adults experience a mental illness and global estimates show at least 50 percent of us will experience a mental health condition in our lifetime. Decades of research have documented the relationship between parental mental health and that of their children: The mechanisms are complex and include hereditary factors (genetic and historical trauma, for example) as well as social-environmental factors, such as stress, financial stability, and the neighborhoods we live in. Parenthood is an incredibly important gift. Yet society does not meaningfully support families experiencing mental illnesses. I spoke with three mental-health advocates who are also parents living with mental health conditions. Here is some of the wisdom shared.

Prioritize self-awareness, self-love, and self-care

As parents, we are often bombarded with messages that we must sacrifice endlessly to give our kids the best life possible. This message has been exponentially harmful to women and primary caregivers who often give up careers, health, and relationships to be there for their kids. These actions often leave us depleted, resentful, and not the best version of ourselves. All of the parents I spoke to referred to the importance of learning what kind of “me time” was needed to support their mental health and how this practice of self-love and self-care resulted in better parenting and family relationships.

For Devika Bhushan, a pediatrician, immigrant, and mother who lives openly with bipolar disorder, sleep has to be prioritized. Inadequate sleep is a well-known trigger for mood episodes in bipolar disorder. She and her husband, Ashish, have created a collaborative team approach, in which her husband ensures that he is available for overnight and early morning needs for their toddler. In turn, her husband can take breaks in the evening, while she spends one-on-one bonding time with her toddler; as she says, “Setting things up in this way helps to ensure that I’m my best and healthiest self as much of the time as I can be — and able to be the best parent and partner that I can possibly be.”

Empowering kids by keeping them informed

Parents spoke about being conscious of their children’s chronological and developmental age, both of which can impact their ability to understand the information provided to them. All three advocates said that they have or will inform their children about their mental-health condition and how it impacts their functioning. The decision to disclose such information to a child may be influenced by the severity of the condition and symptoms a parent experiences. For Bhushan, it is important that her toddler understands why he is not allowed to wake mommy up in the morning; he is also aware that his mother takes medication every day and needs it to stay healthy.

Sulman Mirza, a triple-board-certified psychiatrist who is active on social media (@sulmoney), says he has not yet disclosed his diagnosis of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder to his four children, but he plans to use his personal narrative to promote their understanding of their own mental-health needs, if they should arise. He acknowledges the impact of mental illness and even intergenerational trauma on how parents raise their children, stating that he wants kids to know that “your parents are human beings who are trying their best, and they have their own struggles, but it (hopefully) does not make them love or care for you less.”

Growing wiser through struggles

The idea of post-traumatic growth helps us understand that struggles can come with wisdom, strength, and power. In the case of experiencing a mental illness, these parents said that their own experiences with missed diagnoses, and their impact on their functioning and overall health have created a helpful level of awareness about their kids’ needs and development, giving them the opportunity to support their children’s mental-health needs holistically, compassionately and as early as possible. Ashley Perkins is a pharmacist, educator, mental health advocate, and co-founder of We Matter Too. She also lives with PTSD, ADHD, and autism. “I think all of this has made me a more compassionate parent given my child is more than likely autistic and has ADHD as well,” she says.

Sharing collective wisdom

Using our lived experience to empower other parents is one way to be a mental health advocate and promote family health. Mirza reminds us, “You’re not alone. Parenting is a hard period, and adding in mental illness makes it harder. But it’s still doable.” He also wants parents to know that “It is not a guarantee that your kids will have the same conditions you have” but your experience gives you the wisdom to engage in prevention efforts and support them if they do develop a condition.

Perkins reminds us: “Sharing parts of your reality, which includes the challenges you go through, is okay because it allows your partner and your child to understand what it is you are dealing with. This allows them to support you. When you explain things to children in a way they understand, they grasp the concepts well. It also invites an environment of acceptance regarding mental health, and they will be more likely to open up to you when they are struggling because they know you understand.”

eamwork, perseverance, and creativity are important ingredients to make all of this work. Bhushan says: “You absolutely can be an incredible parent and partner with a well-managed chronic health condition, such as bipolar disorder. It just means you have to be willing to think creatively and put in constant work to prioritize your well-being so that you can be the best version of yourself, for your loved ones as well as for yourself.”

Teamwork, perseverance, and creativity are important ingredients to make all of this work. Bhushan says: “You absolutely can be an incredible parent and partner with a well-managed chronic health condition, such as bipolar disorder. It just means you have to be willing to think creatively and put in constant work to prioritize your well-being so that you can be the best version of yourself, for your loved ones as well as for yourself.”

Kids are capable of compassion and understanding if we give them the opportunity.

Kids are smart and perceptive. They pick up on changes in their parents’ mood and stress levels. Including them in tough conversations, in a developmentally appropriate way, can be an empowering experience for them to learn about health promotion from an early age. This can foster compassion and kindness, which they can extend to themselves and others around them. Perkins says that sharing about her mental health conditions with her son normalizes the full range of the human experience, ultimately opening up the space for him to share his own worries and struggles. She also notes that being open about her need to prioritize her health helps her son understand that it is not a lack of desire that prevents her from being with him at times, and instead helps him be more understanding about the differing needs of others when navigating meaningful relationships. Perkins’ son, Wyatt, wants other kids to know that “I love my mom no matter what” and that he appreciates being informed about his mom’s struggles. Perkins also reminds us that these conversations are ongoing and can be challenging, so make sure to remind kids that asking questions is always okay.

This post is also published on the TEKU Healing Corner Blog.

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If you practice mindfulness meditation, you probably know that it can lower your stress level, reduce anxiety, and improve low moods. You might also be aware of its health-improving properties. According to the National Institutes of Health, mindfulness meditation may be able to reduce your blood pressure, help you cope with chronic pain, and even make it easier to fall asleep at night. But did you also know that by meditating, you’re also developing cognitive skills that can enhance the benefits of psychotherapy?

When you meditate — and by “meditate” I’m referring to mindfulness meditation, with no disrespect intended toward other forms of meditation — you probably focus on an ongoing, present stimulus such as your breathing. You might choose some other consistent sound in your environment, like street noise, wind through tree branches, or even the hum of an air conditioner. hat these stimuli have in common is that their presence continues from the immediate past into the present moment, and can help you draw your attention to the now. No matter what has distracted you, when you’re meditating and you catch your attention drifting away, you can always return to that ongoing, current stimulus because it’s always there to come back to.

And when you redirect your attention this way, you’ve probably learned to do it nonjudgmentally, with no particular frustration or sense of burden. No matter how many times you get distracted — no matter how often you need to bring your attention back to the present — you’ll need to do it without punishing yourself. This is part of the job of meditation: choosing not to be frustrated with minor diversions, but just catching your thoughts if they’ve wandered, and bringing them back to your focal point once again.

Learning to do this can take patience. It also requires the ability to stand back from your own thoughts and feelings, lest they overcome your intentions and sweep you away from your meditative focus. Perhaps the best analogy might be sitting on the bank of a river as boats and other objects float by. You’re not in the river; you’re watching it flow, just as you can watch your thoughts and feelings drift into, and then out of, your awareness. You know, even as you notice these items coming into view, that the river will soon carry them away again, and that you don’t need to take action at this moment. This sense of distance from your thoughts and feelings, no matter how strong they are, can help you avoid being swept up in the current of emotion caused by a passion or a frustration, or distracted by the thought of a pressing problem. When you notice that your meditative state has been disrupted by one of these ostensibly urgent thoughts or feelings, you simply recognize it and let it float away, down the river.

These skills and abilities — the ability to stay present, to gain distance on your thoughts and feelings, and to correct yourself non-judgmentally — can also accelerate the benefits of psychotherapy. For example, in therapy you may be confronted with difficult memories, turbulent feelings, or perspectives that challenge your outlook. You may be told you’re struggling with chronic, intrusive thoughts or critical self-judgments — possibly the introjected relics of a significant relationship in your past. You might even come to realize that you are contributing more to your own problems than you’ve previously understood. Challenging moments like this can be hard to accept, and difficult to comfortably sit through. But if you’ve developed your ability to stay present, and to tolerate the stimuli that intrude upon the present moment, you may be better at hearing your therapist’s interpretations without rejecting them. This meditation-therapy connection was identified in a 2007 study by Daniel Siegel, who found that the self-observation developed in meditation could change the brain, loosening the connections established by prior learning and allowing new input — that of the present moment — to be integrated in a new way. In other words, as Siegel sees it, being present gives you new tools to understand yourself and helps you to unlearn your prior, potentially mistaken assumptions.

Similarly, meditation skills can help you cope with the intrusive comments or interruptions posed in therapy by a person other than your therapist: yourself. People who habitually criticize themselves can have trouble hearing alternative interpretations, or thinking about themselves in ways other than the harsh ones they’ve learned. Now consider how much easier it might be to cope with this kind of regular self-criticism if you’ve developed the ability to gain distance on your own thoughts, as you do when you meditate. You’ll have learned to view these habitual, critical “voices” as something separate from yourself, and you’d be better able to protect your own self-esteem by recognizing the intruding thoughts as alien and unwanted, and responding to them in an appropriate, nonjudgmental way. In a 2012 article, Davis & Hayes referred to this process as “metacognitive awareness,” and linked it to improvements in emotion regulation and reductions in perseveration cognition. These changes, Davis & Hayes concluded, can help you build better emotion regulation skills.

I’ve often heard it said that there are three main goals of psychotherapy: to develop insights into yourself, to accept what you learn, and to regulate the emotions that you feel in response. If that’s true, then the skill-building inherent in regular mindfulness meditation practice can help your therapy succeed in all three ways.

References

Davis, D. M. & Hayes, J. A. (2012). What are the benefits of mindfulness. Monitor on Psychology, 43(7), 64-76.

Farb NA, Anderson AK, Mayberg H, Bean J, McKeon D, Segal ZV. (2010). Minding one’s emotions: mindfulness training alters the neural expression of sadness. Emotion. 10(1):25-33.

Ortner, C.N.M., Kilner, S.J. & Zelazo, P.D. (2007). Mindfulness meditation and reduced emotional interference on a cognitive task. Motivation and Emotion, 31, 271–283

Siegel, D. J. (2007). Mindfulness training and neural integration: differentiation of distinct streams of awareness and the cultivation of well-being. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 2(4): 259–263.

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There are many good reasons to complain about human foresight. For one thing, we are often lousy at taking a longer view, being guided instead by the prospects of a quick buck, the whims of the daily news cycle, or likes on social media. We persistently predict our projects will be finished within budget and on time, even if our rosy forecasts have often been wrong before. And we tend to expect that negative events, say, falling off a ladder, are less likely to happen to us than they actually are. Much of what comes to pass we do not foresee, and much of what we foresee does not come to pass.

Throughout history, humans have conjured up audacious strategies to help them peek ahead in time. An entire alphabet’s worth of fortune-telling methods abounds, from abacomancy—reading the future in the dirt, sand, smoke, or ashes—to zoomancy—reading it from the behavior of birds, ants, goats, or donkeys. What these “-mancies” have in common, of course, is that they do not work as advertised.

Examples of our failures to foresee remain all around us, and they can have tragic consequences for us individually and also for our planet more broadly. When the inventor Thomas Midgley Jr., for instance, introduced lead to gasoline and chlorofluorocarbon to refrigerators, he failed to foresee that within a few decades, these would turn out to be two of the worst pollutants in history.

We are not clairvoyants, but…

You may well be left wondering how our shoddy forecasting capacities could have possibly evolved. What’s the point of so much miscalculation? In our recent book—The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight—Jon Redshaw, Adam Bulley, and I argue that—paradoxically—much of the strength of foresight comes from our very awareness of its limits.

Because we know we don’t know exactly what the future holds, this drives us to make contingency plans and to innovate ways to tip fortune in our favor. Though we may all have a Plan A, say for our careers, we also understand that events may turn out differently from what we imagined: Our company could go bust, we might get bored, or we could be hit by a bus. So, we put money aside for a rainy day, keep an eye on other opportunities, and purchase comprehensive life insurance packages. People sign prenups and set up fire extinguishers for when they might be needed, all the while hoping they never will be.

Hedging her bets, Nina holds out two hands to make sure she catches the dropping prize.

Source: Thomas Suddendorf

Considering multiple possibilities is essential to effective foresight

Take a simple psychology experiment from our research group where we drop a marble into a vertical tube with two exits at the bottom, like an upside-down Y, and ask a participant to catch it. To prepare for the drop, 2-year-old children tend to cover only one or the other exit, which means they catch the marble only some of the time. But by age 4, children instantly cover their bases and hold one hand under each of the exits, ensuring they will catch the prize regardless of where it falls. Even preschoolers know that the future is uncertain and prepare for more than one possibility.

When we giveWhen we give this task to chimpanzees, orangutans, and various monkeys, dropping a grape into the forked tube, they act like young toddlers and tend to cover just one exit. They don’t seem to know that their prediction could be wrong. There is as yet no compelling evidence that nonhuman animals, even our closest living great ape relatives, can foresee mutually exclusive possibilities and prepare accordingly.

Because humans can conceive of multiple versions of the future branching from the present, we can compare our options to select the best one. This capacity has far-reaching implications, not just in enabling contingency planning. It gives us our intuitive sense of “free will”—our (some would say fanciful) impression that we are the masters of our destiny. People tend to treasure this notion. Although it’s not always obvious which path is best, it is empowering to think we are the ones behind the wheel.

Foresight has changed the world

Since we realize that our predictions might be wrong, we can also set out to test them—a process that scientists exploit to a powerful effect. Experiments and observations give rise to theories, which lead to predictions that are then tested with further experiments and observations. If the predictions turn out to be wrong, scientists try to devise a better theory to explain the unexpected observations, which then leads to new predictions and tests. And so on. With this simple cycle—essentially an error-correction mechanism—the collaborative scientific endeavor has resulted in giant strides in our understanding of the world and our capacity to predict what lies ahead.

Today, many scientific forecasts indicate that we are facing dramatic challenges—pollution, climate change, and mass extinctions, to name but a few—that will require complex plans and concerted efforts to address.

As presumably the only animal on the planet capable of foreseeing alternative long-term consequences of their actions, we have choices faced by no other creature. Our farsightedness burdens us, and us alone, with responsibility. And unless we want to go the way of the dodo, it will pay to cover our bases.

This article was adapted from The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight by Thomas Suddendorf, Jonathan Redshaw, and Adam Bulley.

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Lately, it’s been hard for Jack Innanen, a 22-year-old TikTok star from Toronto, to create content. “I feel like I’m tapping a keg that’s been empty for a year,” he said.

Spending hours shooting, editing, storyboarding, engaging with fans, setting up brand deals and balancing the many other responsibilities that come with being a successful content creator have taken a toll. Mr. Innanen, like so many Gen Z influencers who found fame in the last year, is burned out.

“I get to the point where I’m like, ‘I have to make a video today,’ and I spend the entire day dreading the process,” he said.

He’s hardly the only one. “This app used to be so fun,” a TikTok creator known as Sha Crow said in a video from February, “and now your favorite creator is depressed.” He went on to explain how his friends are struggling with mental health problems and the stresses of public life.

The video went viral, and in the comments, dozens of creators echoed his sentiment. “Say it louder bro,” wrote one with 1.7 million followers. “Mood,” commented another creator with nearly five million followers.

As people collectively process the devastation of the pandemic, burnout has plagued nearly every corner of the work force. White-collar workers are spontaneously quitting jobs; parents are at a breaking point; hourly and service employees are overworked; and health care professionals are coping with the exhaustion and trauma of being on the front lines of the pandemic.

According to a recent report by the venture firm SignalFire, more than 50 million people consider themselves creators (also known as influencers), and the industry is the fastest-growing small-business segment, thanks in part to a year where life migrated online and many found themselves stuck at home or out of work. Throughout 2020, social media minted a new generation of young stars.

Now, however, many of them say they have reached a breaking point. In March, Charli D’Amelio, TikTok’s biggest star with more than 117 million followers, said that she had “lost the passion” for posting content. Last month, Spencewuah, a 19-year-old TikTok star with nearly 10 million followers, announced he’d be stepping back from the platform after a spat with BTS fans.

“A lot of older TikTokers don’t post as much, and a lot of younger TikTokers have ducked off,” said Devron Harris, 20, a TikTok creator in Tampa, Fla. “They just stopped doing content. When creators do try to speak out on being bullied or burned out or not being treated as human, the comments all say, ‘You’re an influencer, get over it.’”

What Goes Up, Comes Down

Burnout has affected generations of social media creators. In 2017, Instagram influencers began leaving the platform, saying they were feeling depressed and discouraged. “No one seems to be having any fun anymore on Instagram,” a contributor to the blog This Is Glamorous wrote at the time.

In 2018, Josh Ostrovsky, an Instagram creator known as The Fat Jew, who had also spoken about burnout, echoed those sentiments. “Eventually there will be too many influencers, the market will be too saturated,” Mr. Ostrovsky said.

That same year, many large YouTube creators began stepping away from the platform, citing mental health issues. Their critiques centered on YouTube’s algorithm, which favored longer videos and those who posted on a near-daily basis, a pace that creators said was almost impossible to meet. YouTube product managers and executives addressed creators’ concerns and promised a solution.

But problems with burnout in the creator community are endemic. “If you slow down, you might disappear,” the YouTuber Olga Kay told Fast Company in 2014.

When a fresh crop of young stars began building audiences on TikTok in late 2019 and early 2020, many were hopeful that this time would be different. They’d grown up watching YouTubers speak frankly about these issues. “When it comes to Gen Z creators, we talk so much about mental health and caring for yourself,” said Courtney Nwokedi, 23, a YouTube star in Los Angeles. “We’ve seen a bunch of creators talk about burnout in the past.”

Still, they weren’t prepared for the draining work of building, maintaining and monetizing an audience during a pandemic. “It’s exhausting,” said Jose Damas, 22, a TikTok creator in Los Angeles. “It feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day.”

“TikTok is just as demanding as YouTube,” said Gohar Khan, 22, a TikTok creator in Seymour, Conn.

Thanks to the app’s algorithmically generated “For You” page, TikTok delivers fame faster than any other platform; it’s possible to amass millions of followers within a matter of weeks. But as quickly as creators rise, they can fall.

“It almost feels like I’m getting a taste of celebrity, but it’s never consistent and as soon as you get it, it’s gone and you’re constantly trying to get it back,” said Lauren Stasyna, 22, a TikTok creator in Toronto. “It feels like I’m trying to capture this prize, but I don’t know what the prize even is.”

The volatility can be rattling. “When your views are down, it affects your financial stability and puts your career at risk,” said Luis Capecchi, a 23-year-old TikTok creator in Los Angeles. “It’s like getting demoted at a job with no warning.”

Creators have encountered all kinds of problems, including bullying, harassment and discrimination. “Some creators get their content stolen too, so someone else will go viral off their content then they get all the press,” Mr. Harris said. Not to mention, fan communities and internet commentators can be vicious. “You can’t just film what you want to film,” Mr. Harris said. “They’ll make fun of you if your views drop.”

“I do worry about my longevity on social media,” said Zach Jelks, 21, a TikTok creator in Los Angeles. “People just throw one creator away because they’re tired of them,” he said.

‘Next, Next, Next’

No one has benefited from the creator boom more than the technology industry. After over a decade of largely snubbing influencers, in the past year, high-profile investors have done an about-face. Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are now pouring money into creator-focused start-ups, and platforms themselves have begun to compete for talent.

“The over-saturation and this push for everyone to be a creator seems disingenuous,” Mr. Innanen said. “It seems like a cash grab. It makes me feel very disposable, which maybe I am. It’s just next, next, next.”

Creators also operate without the type of traditional employment protections and benefits that come with many salaried jobs. Some leaders in the creator economy, such as Li Jin, whose venture firm invests in the industry, have called for more sustainable monetization paths for creators of all sizes. But most are left to fend for themselves or risk potentially exploitative management agreements.

“You’re completely self-employed, and it’s not like you can continuously make the same work,” Mr. Innanen said. “You have to evolve and adapt.”

“I feel like I can become washed up any second by an algorithm,” he added.

“There is a dark side to it,” said Jake Browne, 30, founder of the Go House, a content house in Los Angeles. “There’s all these investors and platforms, and they need creators to create content on a mass scale. It’s sort of, let’s get everyone to do it and we don’t care about them. The top 10 percent will make us money.”

That pressure will soon feel familiar to more people who shun low-wage or unreliable work to pursue careers in the creator economy. Platforms like Substack and OnlyFans have arisen to sell the dream of entrepreneurship and independence to more people, many of whom have lost faith in more traditional sectors of the economy.

“The influencer industry is simply the logical endpoint of American individualism, which leaves all of us jostling for identity and attention but never getting enough,” Rebecca Jennings wrote recently in Vox.

It likely won’t change soon. “I feel like social media is built to burn people out,” Mr. Jelks said.

To cope with depression, many TikTok creators have sought therapy and life coaching, or tried to be more open with their fans and friends about their struggles.

“When I’m depressed, I talk to the people around me,” said Tatayanna Mitchell, 22, a YouTube and TikTok creator in Los Angeles. “I make posts on my stories and share those quotes that are like, ‘It’s OK to talk to people if you need help.’” Last September, Ms. Mitchell announced she was “quitting TikTok,” citing toxicity and harassment. However, she rejoined shortly after. “I was just sad,” she said.

Walid Mohammed, 21, a manager for Gen Z creators who lives with Ms. Mitchell and several other social media stars, said that being in proximity to one another has helped them. “As a house we have meetings every morning at 10 a.m. to talk about this stuff,” he said. “We talk about stress and how we have to keep working, but that it’s important to take breaks, you just have to stay consistent. We try to cheer each other up.”

Mr. Innanen said that representatives from TikTok have been supportive when he has used the platform to speak out about mental health challenges and invited him to participate in a panel on the issue with other creators.

“We care deeply about our creators’ wellbeing, and take their concerns seriously,” a TikTok spokesperson wrote in an email statement. “We’re focused on understanding their individual content goals and experiences, and our teams continue to work to provide resources, support, and an open door for feedback.”

But even the most helpful platforms can’t alleviate the precarity that’s inherent to a creator’s job, or the pressure many creators put on themselves. “It feels like I personally am failing and may never recover if a video flops,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on June 13, 2021, Section ST, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Content Creators Burn Out and Break Down.

The post Young Creators Are Burning Out and Breaking Down appeared first on My Blog.

Life can be hard. And when it is, we all deserve comfort, forgiveness, and encouragement. Sometimes, compassion from others helps us cope. Self-compassion, the ability to treat yourself with care, is also important.

Self-compassion is a powerful tool that builds resilience and coping abilities. It improves physical and mental health and motivates us to make positive changes and achieve our goals (Neff, 2023).

Despite its many benefits, being kind to ourselves can feel awkward and scary, especially if we’re not used to doing it. However, it doesn’t have to be difficult. Often, getting started is the hardest part. In this post, you’ll learn eight simple, yet effective, ways to practice self-compassion.

Ways to Practice Self-Compassion

1. Acknowledge that you’re struggling. Acknowledge that you’re having a hard time, even if it’s a minor setback, mistake, or frustration, and acknowledging it without judgment cues you to offer yourself compassion. Start by saying, “This is really hard. It would be hard for anyone.”

2. Accept that you’re imperfect and that’s normal. Try not to beat yourself up when you make a mistake or notice your shortcomings. Instead, say or do something kind for yourself—just as you would for a friend who’d made a mistake. Contrary to popular belief, being hard on yourself won’t motivate you to change or do better; people learn and grow when they’re accepted, encouraged, and nurtured.

3. Give yourself compliments. In addition to lifting us up when we’re down, friends celebrate our accomplishments and point out our strengths. Be a good friend to yourself by giving yourself compliments. Here are some examples:

• I’m proud of myself for getting to work on time.
• I made it through that meeting without losing my temper. Great job!
• I put a lot of effort into this.
• I’m good at _________.

You do a lot of things right. Make sure you’re noticing and giving yourself credit!

4. Accept compliments from others. Many people dismiss compliments from others because they feel uncomfortable being the center of attention or they don’t believe the compliment is warranted. If you feel uncomfortable, remember that people generally give compliments because they care about and respect you. Let yourself benefit from the kindness and positive energy that’s being offered.

5. Set boundaries. Healthy boundaries are a way of loving yourself and others. You need to set boundaries to protect yourself from physical and emotional harm. Boundaries can help you manage stress and prioritize what’s most important to you. They also strengthen relationships by communicating clear expectations for how people can treat you and how you will treat them.

6. Invest in self-improvement. I see the desire to improve yourself as an indication that you value yourself. We all have things we’d like to improve, but not everyone will invest the time and money in themselves to actually do the work. Self-improvement comes in many forms—going to therapy, reading self-help books, taking a class, changing an unhealthy habit, or attending a support group, to name a few. When you love yourself, you’ll want to improve—not because you’re broken or inadequate, but because you care about yourself.

7. Honor your feelings. As a society, we tend to be uncomfortable with emotions, especially the “unpleasant” ones. We prefer to numb out with alcohol, food, electronics, pornography, and busyness. We pretend we’re “fine” when we’re really very far from fine.

However, feelings don’t just go away when you avoid them. They will show up at another time, in another way. This is why honoring your feelings is a gift you give yourself. It’s a way of validating your experiences.

Feelings are also windows into what you really need. For example, your feelings of anger might be telling you that you’re overworked and tired. When you ignore your feelings, you can’t meet your own basic needs. Start paying attention to your emotions. To start, take a few minutes to sit quietly and give them space to surface. Notice what feelings emerge and try to name them.

8. Comfort yourself like a baby. Think about how you might comfort a crying baby or toddler and do the adult version for yourself!

Here are some ideas:

• a warm bath
• cozy sweater
• going to bed early
• savoring a cup of hot tea or cocoa
• lavender essential oil
• repetitive motion (walking or swinging)
• Rereading a favorite book or rewatching a favorite show
• Listening to soothing music
• Reassuring self-talk, such as, “You can handle this.”

Final Thoughts

Self-compassion doesn’t need to be complicated. Start slowly and, with practice, it will become second nature.

Remember, you deserve loving-kindness, and you can give it to yourself! You don’t have to earn it and you don’t have to do it perfectly.

© Sharon Martin. Adapted from content published on the author’s website.

References

Neff, K. (2023). About self-compassion. https://self-compassion.org/

The post 8 Simple Strategies to Boost Self-Compassion appeared first on My Blog.

As of 2023, the United States has almost 250 million social media users. That number climbs to nearly 5 billion people worldwide and is expected to reach 6 billion by 2027. The average person spends an astonishing two and half hours of their time on social media each day. To put that into perspective, if you started using social media at age 10 and continued till age 80, you’d have spent over seven years of your life on these apps.

With statistics like these, we all need to be asking about the long-term risks to our health, including our mental health. But what does the science actually tell us about the links between mental health and social media use? Here’s the latest science, and steps we should all consider taking today.

Google “social media” and “mental health,” and you’re sure to get a lot of hits. Prominent themes in news stories include higher rates of depression, anxiety, and stress especially in younger people. Yet the actual scientific research tends to be more split on the topic. So what does the research say? Let’s review some of the largest analyses looking at the links between social media use and mental health published in the last few years:

• Problematic social media use in youth is linked to higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress (2022 systematic review and meta-analysis)
• Problematic social media use is correlated with worse well-being and higher distress, as well as more loneliness and depression (2020 meta-analysis)
• Screen time does not appear to be linked to worse mental health outcomes including smartphones and social media time (2022 meta-analysis)
• Social media can create community, but when used excessively, it’s linked to depression and other mental health disorders (2022 meta-analysis of countries across the world)
• Social media use correlations with worse mental health in youth are described by some studies as “small to moderate,” while others looking at the same data reported the associations as “serious, substantial or detrimental,” suggesting disagreement in the interpretation of the data (2022 umbrella review of data)
• Young adults with higher social media use may feel more socially isolated (observational data, 2017)
• Older adults who use social media may experience “enhanced communication with family and friends, greater independence and self-efficacy, creation of online communities, positive associations with well-being and life satisfaction and decreased depressive symptoms.” (2021 scoping review)

As you can probably tell, even the most comprehensive journal articles on this topic have rather conflicting messages. Yet there are some key stable themes that we can extract from all this work that can help guide us towards safer social media use for our brain health.

1. Our digital devices, especially our smartphones, are packed with technology and apps designed to capture our attention. Companies behind these products are largely incentivized to keep us looking at the screen, not necessarily happy.
2. Children and youth may be at higher risk for negative mental health outcomes from social media use than adults.
3. Problematic (unhealthy) social media use is emerging as a clear risk factor for worse mental health, but the definition of this term is unclear. Usually, it’s something similar to characteristics of addiction (e.g., preoccupation, compulsion, withdrawal).
4. Social comparison that occurs due to social media exposure may increase the risk for worse mental health outcomes, and this may be more of an issue for young women.
5. Social media can provide meaningful connections to people who might not have access to strong in-person networks specific to their interests or needs.

What does this mean for how we might approach social media use?

With most people on Earth participating in at least one social media platform, it’s unlikely that the social media genie is headed back into the bottle anytime soon. Some have argued for large-scale restrictions on social media use for children and adolescents while others propose an outright ban. How and when a person engages with social media will always be unique to the individual, but when looking at a personal approach to use, most will benefit from asking if their use passes the test of T.I.M.E. (adapted from Brain Wash).

T: Time-restricted

Is your time spent on social media time restricted? If not, can you set a time limit that you feel comfortable dedicating to social media?

I: Intentional

Is your social media use intentional, or are you falling prey to doomscrolling, social comparison, or the plans of the app developer that’s trying to steal your attention?

M: Mindful

Is your social media time mindful or mindless? Do you find yourself losing large chunks of your day to scrolling? If so, consider reevaluating your use.

E: Enriching

Does your social media use enrich your life? Does it educate you? Connect you with others? Provide an opportunity to grow your business. If it’s hard to answer yes, it’s likely that your apps are extracting more from you than you’re getting in return.

The post The Conflicting Science of Social Media and Mental Health appeared first on My Blog.

By: Kimberly Nelson, MA with Courtney Kelly

Receiving a diagnosis is a significant milestone on the road to recovery. It clarifies courses of treatment, supplies precedent, and gives rhyme and reason to symptoms that may otherwise be confusing or even scary. “Identifying a set of experiences with a name can often be a relief for those with mental health conditions. It helps them recognize that they’re not alone,” said Carrie Hanson, Clinical Director of CooperRiis Healing Community. When conceptualized appropriately, diagnoses are powerful tools patients and practitioners can use to identify targeted interventions, develop comprehensive treatment plans, and cultivate effective management strategies.

Mistake 1: Resisting Your Diagnosis

But conceptualized inappropriately, diagnoses can get in the way of recovery. Issues arise when mental health conditions are viewed as threats to established identities. Unable to integrate their psychological challenges with their sense of self, a person with this attitude towards their diagnosis may refuse to accept they’re struggling. Denial can easily devolve into delusion, and delusion makes it impossible for individuals to recognize how their mental health is impacting their lives. Healing can only begin when folks acknowledge it’s needed to begin with, so this stymies the recovery process at the start line.

As an example, mental health conditions have historically (and erroneously) been associated with “weakness.” This association has caused more than a few to resist treatment on the grounds that accepting a diagnosis would make them a weak person. But refusing to confront challenges doesn’t make them go away. It often makes them worse. If you believe you’re not “supposed” to be feeling anxiety when you are, you’ll not only start to feel anxiety about your anxiety, you’ll also be less likely to seek help for it.

Psychoeducation offers a powerful antidote to this type of denial. When people learn that mental health conditions have nothing to do with their character, that symptoms result from forces outside of their control—genes, traumas, environments, norms—they start to realize that diagnoses don’t undermine who they are. They can be strong, virtuous, courageous, and experience psychological challenges. In fact, accepting those challenges as real is itself a demonstration of strength, virtue, and courage.

Mistake 2: Becoming Your Diagnosis

On the flip side of resisting a diagnosis is letting it consume you. Also known as engulfment, overidentification with a mental health condition can be just as detrimental to the recovery process. This is especially true when paired with internalized stigma. A metastudy on the relationship between identity and recovery from severe mental illness found that the more negative associations a person had with their condition, the worse they’d fare during treatment. Patients with schizophrenia who believed they would never be able to live a purposeful, fulfilled life with their condition were more likely to isolate themselves from others, opt out of evidence-based programming, and fail to apply management strategies they learned.

Internalized stigma can be tricky to unpack, as it’s typically buried under years of acculturation. Our perspectives on mental illness are shaped by subtle (and not-so-subtle) messaging from the media, our family members, and the people in our communities, for better or worse. And in the case of the latter, “folks may view their health care providers as the ‘bearers of bad news’ rather than facilitators of healing,” explained Hanson. Given that a positive therapeutic relationship is critical to recovery, this mindset obstructs progress. To secure better treatment outcomes, patients must establish better outlooks on their lives.

Cognitive behavioral therapy can help. By equipping individuals with the tools they need to dismantle maladaptive beliefs, CBT can empower folks with mental health conditions to let go of the stigma that may be getting in the way of recovery. “Their careers, relationships, and even routines might look different than they once envisioned, but that doesn’t mean people with psychological challenges can’t live full, gratifying lives,” said Hanson. “Recovery is possible. For some people, it begins with learning to believe that.”

Mistake 3: Giving Up Control to Your Diagnosis

For others, it begins with recognizing that they still have agency in their lives. Overidentification can melt into entitlement for those who believe a diagnosis means they’re no longer responsible for their own actions. While it’s important to recognize that mental health conditions can impact or even impair decision-making, it’s also important to remember that all decisions have consequences. Having a diagnosis does not erase the harm a hurtful statement can cause, for example.

“Once, a resident had an angry outburst that frightened some of his peers. When we confronted him about his behavior, he said he couldn’t help it. We calmly pointed out that while his condition did make emotional regulation hard, he still had to apologize to those his actions affected,” recalled Hanson. By supporting him in doing so, this individual’s therapeutic team helped him exercise agency. And agency, like a muscle, strengthens with use.

It’s never a good idea for anyone to beat themselves up for something they said or did, mental health notwithstanding. The key is to balance self-compassion with accountability. Be cognizant of the internal and external factors impacting your decisions, but don’t relinquish accountability for them. Striking this balance will enable you to become an active participant in your life rather than a passive victim of circumstance.

Mistake 4: Focusing Exclusively on Your Diagnosis

Psychological conditions can make everything from retaining employment to getting out of bed extremely difficult. For this reason, it’s critical for folks with mental health conditions to nourish aspects of their identity that aren’t related to their diagnoses. Our behaviors emanate from our self-concepts; the person who defines themselves as “depressed” and nothing more is likely to act in line with that definition. But the person who defines themselves as a complex, multifaceted human being is empowered to act in line with their goals instead of their symptoms.

This is why connecting with core values is such an important practice for individuals suffering from mental health conditions. Doing so not only reinforces the fact that they are more than their diagnoses but also supports them in achieving self-actualization. “You can’t be your best self until you know who you are,” said Hanson, “and who you are is someone who has aspirations, someone to whom things matter.” A clear understanding of what you want out of life and why will motivate you to persist towards meaningful goals, even when symptoms make that hard.

When people conceptualize psychological challenges as opportunities for growth, the process of confronting those challenges becomes therapeutic. “Enrichment” occurs when a person accepts a diagnosis as a part of their story but does not let it drive their narrative. Equipped with their core values, supported by their providers, and in possession of their ambitions, their difficulties become arenas for self-discovery, and their hardships become hero’s journeys.

The post You Are Not Your Diagnosis appeared first on My Blog.

Schooling has a halo around it in society’s eyes, and halos tend to interfere with perception and judgment. Maybe that’s why nearly everyone, including journalists, whose job it should be to keep their eyes and minds open and report honestly to the public, continues to ignore the ever-growing evidence that school is a major cause of anxiety, depression, and even suicide in children and teens.

Every scintilla of evidence that social media may be contributing to the mental health crisis among young people gets blown up in the popular press (see here), while the overwhelming evidence for the role of the school is ignored. An exception is an August 2022 Scientific American article by Tyler Black, an emergency psychiatrist who works at a major children’s hospital,. Black shows clearly and starkly the temporal relationship between suicides and the school calendar.

I first became interested in the relationship between schooling and mental breakdowns in 2014, when a clinical psychologist who works with children told me that her business increases dramatically every fall when the school year begins and declines again in mid-to-late June when it ends. Her view was that children simply do better psychologically when school is not in session.

I wondered then whether I could find objective, published evidence for a relationship between mental breakdowns and the school calendar. I scoured the literature and found no research directly related to that topic, but I did find a graph, published online by one hospital, showing the month-to-month number of children’s emergency psychiatric visits to that hospital for every year from 2000 to 2013. The numbers were startling. The average rates of admissions were less than half as high during the school vacation months of July and August than they were during the months of full schooling. The online article made no mention of this striking and consistent relationship, but the data were clear. I published the data in a post on this blog, in August of 2014.

Four years later I conducted another search and found new research, and one older study that I had missed in the earlier search, confirming and extending what I had found for that single hospital. The research revealed that throughout the nation, suicides, as well as lesser mental health breakdowns for school-aged children and teens (but for no other age group), rise sharply at the beginning of every school year and then decline every summer. I summarized those findings in another post in May 2018. But now there are even more data. I begin with data presented in Black’s Scientific American article.

Children’s Risk of Suicide Increases on School Days

The subtitle here is the title of Black’s article. He showed graphically, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wonder database for the years 2000 to 2020, a tight relationship between the school calendar and suicides for school-aged children (under age 18). The data revealed that during school months, the suicide rate was consistently highest on Monday through Thursday, declined significantly on Friday, and was lowest on Saturday and Sunday.

His data also showed that, month by month over the 20-year period, the suicide rate was lowest in July, which is the only month that is fully vacation for nearly all schools; increased somewhat in August, when some children start school and most begin to anticipate school; increased much more in September, when most children are back in school; and by October was 43% higher than it was in July. The rate then remained about that high through the rest of the school year, except for a dip in December (when most children have a winter vacation), and finally declined sharply in June when summer vacation begins for most students.

His graphs show further that the relationship between month and suicide did not hold for young adults (age 18-30) beyond secondary school age. In fact, for them, the suicide rate was slightly higher in the summer months than during the rest of the year.

Other relatively new studies reveal a similar temporal relationship between school and suicide in other countries, including Germany, Finland, India, and Japan. The study in Japan encompassed a 40-year period, from 1974 to 2014, and revealed on average a roughly 40% jump in suicides at the start of each school year compared with the rate during summer break.

Suicides Declined When Schools Closed in the COVID Pandemic and Rose Again When In-Person Schooling Resumed

When COVID struck and U.S. schools closed in March of 2020, many pundits predicted that this disruption in children’s routines would be disastrous for their mental health. But at least three independent systematic surveys—one of which was conducted by the nonprofit organization Let Grow and which I published in the American Journal of Play—revealed that, on average, both parents and children themselves reported the children to be less anxious and depressed during at least the first three months of lock-down (when the surveys were conducted) than they had been before schools were closed. You can find my academic report of the Let Grow study and review of the other studies here (and my blog posts on the research here and here).

More recently, a research team headed by Benjamin Hansen of the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed teen suicide data for the period before, during, and after pandemic school closures in the U.S. (published here). They found (in their words): “Teen suicides plummeted in March of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began in the U.S. and remained low throughout the summer before rising in Fall 2020 when many K-12 schools returned to in-person instruction.”

These researchers also developed a method to determine the day when individual counties reopened schools and found a tight relationship between that timing and the rise in suicides. For counties that opened schools in early August, the rise in suicides began in August; for counties that opened schools in September, the rise in suicides began in September.

A drop in teen suicides during COVID school closures has also been reported in China. The pandemic started earlier there than in the U.S., so Chinese schools closed much earlier in the school year than U.S. schools and began reopening for in-person schooling around the same time in March that U.S. schools were closing. According to the report, the reopening was accompanied by a sharp increase in psychological distress and suicides among students.

Why Do Mental Health Breakdowns and Suicides Increase When School Is in Session?

The answer to this question is probably not simple and may differ substantially from case to case. Hansen and his team suggest that a major cause of the suicide increase is persistent bullying. As evidence, they cite studies showing that bullying occurs more in school than in other settings and that bullying appears to be the immediate trigger for at least some suicides. Black suggests a more multifaceted set of causes. The bullying may not come just from students but also from teachers or even from the way the school is structured. He writes: “[School] can be incredibly stressful because of bullying, health- and disability-related barriers, discrimination, lack of sleep and sometimes abuse.”

In a study of “Stress in America” conducted by the American Psychological Association in 2013, teenagers of school age were found to be more stressed, by their own reports, than people in any other age group, and 83% of them said school pressure was a significant source of their stress. This was much higher than any other reported source, including bullying. Moreover, teens who were surveyed during the school year reported twice as many instances of severe recent stress than did teens who were surveyed during the summer. The idea that the pressure and competitiveness of schoolwork itself is a major cause of psychological breakdown is reinforced by research showing that students in “high-achieving schools” suffer from such breakdowns at higher rates than do those in schools where the concern for high marks is less strong (see my summary of such research here).

What Can We Do About the Problem?

So far, the most common approach of schools in addressing the problem is to try to change the children, not the school. They have brought in therapists, paid for courses in “social-emotional learning,” recommended drugs, and counseled parents, but they have done little to change schooling itself to make it more student-friendly. In fact, most school changes have been in the opposite direction, which may help explain why rates of suicide have increased from year to year for school-aged kids. Black suggests it is time for schools to modify their own practices. Among his suggestions (quoted verbatim) are the following:

• “Reduce homework (preferably get rid of it). Some of the best educational science available shows that excessive homework is of limited benefit and in fact harms children’s health and well-being.”

• “Restore funding for playtime, music, and art in school and de-emphasize academic overload. Children need relaxation, comfort, beauty, fun, and play. Children who have opportunities for play and rest will learn more in their academics, and they will also be able to sustain their development as they grow.”

• “End ‘perfect attendance’ awards and goals. … We should all, from time to time, recognize when we are at our limit and need a break.” [My words: The suggestion here is that just as adults sometimes take mental health breaks from work, kids should be encouraged, not discouraged, in taking breaks from school when they feel the need.]

• “Start school later. How many more decades of research do we need to show that children need more sleep and that adolescents do better in school when the day starts later? It’s time to make serious structural changes in the early-morning wake-up times.” [Again, me: One of the reasons given by parents for their kids’ improved mental health during the COVID lockdown, in our survey, was that they were able to sleep later in the morning.]

• “Be nonjudgmental and respect children’s identities and identity formation. This is not a ‘woke’ concept. This is a caring, compassionate concept that works for all children all the time.”

• “Recognize and address child abuse within schools. There exist (and many readers may likely recall) teachers who are abusive, punitive, and cruel.”

To Black’s suggestions for modifying schools, I add this suggestion to parents: If your child truly, consistently, says he or she hates school, or if the bouts of anxiety or depressions are severe, take that seriously and do research on alternatives. Alternatives are far more available, even to families with low incomes, than most people realize.

As regular readers of this blog know, I have conducted and written about research studies of young people who opted out of public or conventional private schooling, often because of traumatic experiences there. They opted for homeschooling or for democratic alternative schooling, and in those settings restored themselves, discovered and pursued their interests, and went on to highly successful adult lives in the whole range of careers valued by our society. Some even reported to me that they believed their parents’ willingness to take them out of conventional schooling saved their lives, and I believe them.

Our societal view that forced, curriculum-based schooling is essential for success in today’s world is a societal myth. For a summary of evidence for that, see here and here.

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