This week I spoke on a panel at the Jewish Funders Network annual conference about the crisis in teen and young adult mental health. I doubt I need to tell you the numbers. They paint a devastating portrait. According to the most recent CDC data, 41 percent of American high school students in 2021 reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, up from 28 percent ten years earlier. Within this number, the rate rises to an astonishing 57 percent of girls, and 69 percent of LGBTQ teens. Likewise, a recent CNN poll found that 52 percent of Americans ages 18-29 have always or often felt anxious in the past 12 months.

It’s not only the pandemic that’s driving these numbers. The rates have been on a steady increase for years, and a variety of hypotheses have been offered: social media, especially channeled through always-available smartphones, has deeply corrosive effects on young people’s mental health; the hopelessness of so many narratives about climate change feeds a feeling of helplessness; the tethering of teens and young adults to their parents through location-based apps—and, even earlier, helicopter parenting—removes the play spaces in which they naturally develop resilience and independence.

I have one young adult child, one teenager, and one more about to become a teen. I have lived this. The anxiety and depression is real and gut-wrenching. The struggles with identity, addiction, functioning in the world—everyone is either struggling with them or knows someone who is. And our systems are overwhelmed. One friend recently told me that........

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