By Alexandra Malatesta

In the last few years, especially amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve watched friends sit in lecture halls silently struggling – showing up, turning in assignments and still feeling completely overwhelmed. One of my closest friends once told me, “I don’t even know if I’m burnt out or if something’s actually wrong.” 

Moments like that make it clear: youth mental health isn’t abstract, it’s happening in real time, to people right in front of us. And yet, despite how often we hear about it, the conversation somehow still feels easy to ignore. Youth mental health is being oversimplified, misunderstood and even politicised, which prevents real action.

At first I thought dealing with a mental health issue as I entered my 20s meant I was just “getting older.” But, no – rates of anxiety and mental health issues among young people have risen significantly, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting in 2021 that more than 40% of high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. 

Being a young individual during the rise of a mental health crisis has been nothing less than stressful.

“Treating emotional distress as a form of communication is not a misbehavior,” said Felica Harris, a certified peer specialist with the Behavioral Resource Center of Dane County. “When we as the adults slow down and believe children the first time when they show us that they’re struggling, we can reduce that shame, prevent escalation and interrupt lifelong patterns of untreated distress.”

However, the sad truth is, the more this issue has been talked about, the more it has been watered down in the media. For example, instead of prompting action, it often will lead to passive reactions including, “I’ve heard this before,” or “this doesn’t apply to my child,” without fully understanding. This creates a gap between awareness and action, where people recognize the issue, but fail to respond to it.

“They don’t need any more judgment,” said Harris. 

Listen to your children. Only then can society begin to address the root causes of the crisis and create environments where young people are truly supported.

While increased awareness has encouraged more open conversations, it has also created an environment saturated with messaging. The seriousness of this issue can often be dismissed and in many cases, simplified or trend-driven conversations around mental health can obscure the complexity of the issue. This ends up reducing it to surface-level discourse rather than prompting meaningful action. 

At the same time, I have noticed amongst my peers that deep-rooted bias surrounding mental health issues persist, particularly across different cultural, socio-economic and political groups. This creates a new and pressing challenge: how to take youth mental health seriously in an environment that is not only oversaturated with messaging, but also increasingly shaped by political narratives?

Media coverage plays a significant role in shaping public perception on many issues, this one included. Articles such as “America’s woke education is fueling the mental health crisis,” published by Fox News, frame youth mental health through a political lens, suggesting that cultural or ideological shifts are the primary drivers of the crisis. As “mental health days” become more normalized, there is a risk that the original purpose has been skewed.

Based on my lived experience, time off or space to pause is often overlooked due to media biases that frame it as “woke” or “unmotivated.” With a weekly audience of 2 million, consisting of all demographics, especially young adults and parents, this FOX News article is just one example of how narratives influence how individuals interpret the issue.

Rather than approaching youth mental health as a multifaceted public health concern, these perspectives can contribute to polarization and the continuation of a cycle that can be negatively impactful for generations. It’s contributing to an issue where solutions become tied to political identity, rather than evidence-based and taken seriously. 

To move forward, it is essential to shift the conversation from awareness to action. This includes prioritizing evidence-based solutions such as increasing access to mental health services in schools, investing in community-based support systems and addressing broader structural inequalities that impact well-being.

The media is so influential that even one article can change a parent’s perception on mental health, leaving their child to suffer because the parent thinks its “just a phase,” or that the child ought to “toughen up.” This is a major problem. 

However, this politicization is particularly concerning given that research consistently shows youth mental health is shaped by a combination of biological, environmental and social factors. For example, studies from the National Institutes of Health emphasize that early family environment plays a critical role in the development of emotional regulation, which is closely linked to long-term mental health outcomes. Supportive, stable caregiving environments can act as protective factors, while chronic stress, trauma or instability can significantly increase risk.

Children and adolescents are particularly impressionable, meaning that the way society discusses mental health has real consequences. Media messaging about my generation (Gen Z) is inconsistent or politicized, and this creates confusion, minimizes the issue’s urgency and/or discourages young people from seeking help. 

This happens often with my older family members. They see a headline on their Facebook feed, or a segment on TV and believe what they see. Conversely, when conversations are grounded in research, empathy, and nuance, they can foster understanding and promote meaningful support.

Additionally, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory in 2021 highlighting the youth mental health crisis as “the defining public health challenge of our time,” pointing to factors such as social media use, disrupted routines and reduced access to support systems during the pandemic. These findings reinforce that youth mental health cannot be attributed to a single cause or reduced to a political talking point, it is the result of intersecting systems and experiences.

As I think of what kind of parent I want to be one day, I want to push my children to speak up and advocate for themselves — such a vital part in getting help. I also have discovered that it requires media literacy, encouraging audiences to critically evaluate the sources and framing of the information they consume. In order to take youth mental health seriously, we need to resist the urge to oversimplify or politicize the issue. It requires: acknowledging its complexity, centering the experiences of young people and committing to solutions that extend beyond headlines.

If we continue to treat youth mental health as a headline rather than a lived reality, we risk raising a generation that knows how to talk about mental health but not how to act on it. Listening – really listening – may be the difference between early support and lifelong struggle.