Adolescent Mental Health Quotes

In the long view, no nation is any healthier than its children.

There is actually a huge suicide problem in Palo Alto schools, so obviously not all is well in paradise. High expectations, and the pressure to achieve in a highly competitive world are too much for a lot of very promising young people. There have been something like ten youth suicides in Palo Alto in the past ten years. They usually step in front of the train that runs by the high school.

I would say that during the time that I was 14 and pregnant - I didn't even know what pregnancy was when I got pregnant - I was trying to do everything I could to harm myself. I said to God, "God, if you want me to die, then you're going to have to kill me".

We're beginning to find out that many of the school shootings are side reactions to Prozac-like medications. That's a very big hidden factor.

A child born today in the United Kingdom stands a ten times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university ... This can be taken as an indication that we are driving our children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating them. Perhaps it is our way of educating them that is driving them mad.

Many mothers are wholly ignorant of the almost universal prevalence of secret vice, or self-abuse among the young. Why hesitate to say firmly and without quibble that personal abuse lies at the root of much of the feebleness, paleness, nervousness and good-for-nothingness of the entire community?

Adolescence is a dreadful period. We tend to notice those youngsters who misbehave and call attention to themselves, but there are others, equally miserable, who receive no help simply because they are silent. (41)

But don’t let them talk you into anything you don’t feel comfortable with.” “They’re my friends.” “So what?” He shrugged. “If your friends walked off a cliff, would you do it too?” “Why would they walk off a cliff?” I asked in alarm. “Is someone having problems at home?

I think that's also why it's so exciting. I really believe this play is important these are issues that people don't talk about. Certainly they never talked about this type of thing at my high school. That's what makes it so hard for kids. But it is something that people do go through.

You'd think after thousands of years on this planet the human race would have released some kind of handbook for teenagers, telling them how to get through teenagehood and get help for their issues. Yet here we are, struggling through it in our own ways.

I look at the rates of suicide among gay teens. They are so, so high for suicide attempts and for completed suicides.

A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.

Some of the anxiety has been laid to rest. We don't see a spike in adult use. We don't think we see a spike in youth consumption although there are some things that are disconcerting.

Often, when you're growing up, you don't know what's wrong. We don't talk openly enough about mental illness. How do you know - especially today with the incredibly high stress teens are put under during high school - if you have depression or if you have a mental illness or if you have anxiety? You don't know, because you've never seen it.

Lying on the ceiling. Refusing to go to school. Not opening up to me. Climbing water towers. "No, she's all right."

Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child.

I'd like to see a world where, if a teenager fears she's seeing/hearing things, she feels as comfortable seeking help as she would if she found a lump on her leg.

It would be hard to define chaos better than as a world where children decide they don't want to live.

I'm into anything that really helps children.

Thank God the Internet didn't exist when I was 15, 16. I knew people were tearing me apart, but my God, if there had been a net and commenters and I would have been reading them - it was bad enough as it was. To grow up in the media eye, I'm glad it happened, but that was definitely not healthy being around adults all the time.

In the lead-up to the launch of my new book I Was Here, I’ve seen a lot of discussion about depression and suicide and mental health and YA dealing with such intense matters. What I haven’t seen discussed is kittens.

I talk to teens everyday about topics that are often extraordinarily uncomfortable.

What a childhood I had. My parents sent me to a child psychiatrist. The kid didn't help me at all.

When you talk to a young teenage girl, they're just full of self-loathing. The reason they feel self-loathing is they don't feel normal. It is a world that has not been built for them. It's been built for men, and that's why they feel bad.