Our Youth In Mental Health Crisis: We Must Act NOW!

“And how are the children?” –traditional African social greeting

“Kasserian ingera?”

That’s how members of the Masai tribe in Africa greet each other when they meet. Instead of saying something like “How are you?” or “What’s new?” they instead ask their fellow tribesperson, “And how are the children?”  In the Masai tribe the belief is that the health of the village, the neighborhood, and the society is only as strong as the next generation. The well-being of the children is central to their identity, to how they judge the goodness of life.

“And how are the children?”

If I were to answer that question about the children and the youth of the United States right now, I would have to say, “Not so good. Not at all.”  For the truth is that coming out of COVID, out of almost three years of social isolation and hybrid schooling, too many of America’s kids are hurting, and badly. The hearts of our children and youth are battered. Their spirits are downtrodden. Their souls are bruised.

That’s not hyperbole.

In October of 2021, no less than the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association joined together to declare “A National State of Emergency in Children’s and Adolescent’s Mental Health.” As one mental health professional observed, “Children’s mental health has been a hidden pandemic for years; COVID…simply ignited a simmering problem…”

What’s the crisis look like? Suicide is the leading cause of death among people aged 10 to 34 in the United States, according to the CDC. In 2021 emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts were 51 percent higher for adolescent girls than in past years. In 2020, almost half (48%) of youth ages 14 to 24 years old reported feeling so sad or hopeless for two weeks or more, that they stopped doing some of their usual activities. That’s according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.  On top of this, according to the Journal of Public Health, 216,617 children and youth in the United States lost a caregiver to COVID, a Mom or Dad or an older sibling or a grandparent.

I know that for me, I look at the world our kids now live in and compare it to the one I called home, way back when, and it seems like to be a kid or a teenager in 2023: it is just harder. It is just more complicated. It is just busier and more intense, more filled with stress and when we add in what COVID did to all the social and community support structures in the lives of our children?

That’s why we are at a crisis point.

I know this because I see it, up close, right where I live and right where I work. Like the young adults I love who struggle with substance abuse or eating disorders. The middle school kids at church I lead at youth group who often live or die based upon what shows up about them (or not) on social media. There are the young people that my church comforted in their grief as they struggled to process the loss of a teenage friend who died in an awful car accident. There are the twenty somethings I know, who are so buried under student debt that they can barely make it. Or they work 24/7 or maybe even two jobs because it’s the only way to afford decent housing in the Boston area.

That’s even before COVID ratcheted up youth distress to unfathomable levels. Try finding a therapist for yourself, no matter for your child. The rooms are full, and the appointments are booked solid, so you’ll just have to wait.  Imagine how it is to be a kid going off to school while hearing about all the mass shootings in the hallways and classrooms of America.

And how are the children?

The children need us right now. Need us to care. Need us to advocate for more money for mental health care and treatment and for more beds in psychiatric hospitals for youth. We need to have more helping professionals in our schools and more support for parents and caregivers.  

But at the most basic level, children and youth also need to have adults in their lives who remind those kids on a regular basis. You are loved. You matter. You are worth it. You are a child of God. And whatever it is that you are going through, I promise to walk with you until you get to the other side and get healthy. And recover. And believe in yourself again, trust in and realize the amazing person that God makes you to be and to become.

If that sounds pollyannish or simplistic in the face of such tough times for the mental health and well-being of our children and youth, then so be it.  I’ve been blessed to work with youth for almost 40 years now, as their youth group advisor, and church camp leader; as their pastor and their teacher, and as their Uncle and Godfather.

Always I try and remember that when I was young and struggling, it was the adults in my life who took the time to care and who saved me in a way. Who cared so much about and for me that I learned how to care for myself.  Adults who embodied God’s unconditional love.

And how are the children?

The hopeful answer to that question is, in part, up to you and to me and adults who take the time to care for our children and our youth. These young souls belong to all of us. And they need our help. Now. NOW.

And how are the children? May God help us, to help them.       

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.