64 | NOVEMBER 30 • 2023 
J
N

HEALTH

I

t’s no secret that today’s 
youth have navigated a diffi-
cult past few years. Between 
the COVID-19 pandemic, social 
isolation and learning remotely, 
to the Ukraine-Russia war and 
now the ongoing Israel-Hamas 
crisis, times have been turbulent 
for our youngest generations.
Pair that with the everyday 
challenges of being a child or 
teen — the pressure and compe-
tition of social media, family life 
or simply navigating school — 
and mental health experts say 
this recipe contributes to the rise 
of mental health crises among 
youth.
In October 2021, a national 
emergency in child mental 
health was declared. Suicide 
rates among young people ages 

10 to 24 skyrocketed by 62% 
between 2007 and 2021, and 
mental health disorders such as 
depression and anxiety contin-
ued to climb.
Now that two years have 
passed since the emergency was 
first declared, the situation has 
only gotten worse for youth, 
especially given the current geo-
political climate.
Jewish-owned Birmingham 
Maple Clinic, which has been 
in business for 50 years this fall, 
is no stranger to the many diffi-
culties today’s youth are facing. 
The Michigan mental health 
clinic, which has expertise in 
more than 50 specialties, includ-
ing ADHD and general anxiety 
disorder, provides treatment for 
local youth and/or their families.

BREAKING DOWN WALLS
The needs vary greatly. Some 
kids, like the preteen son of a 
Jewish community member 
who wishes to remain anony-
mous, struggle with the after-
math of his parents’ divorce. In 
this case, the child began ther-
apy following the divorce, but 
was also having a tough time 
with the effects of the COVID-
19 pandemic and the social iso-
lation that followed.
For this child in particular, 
therapy at Birmingham Maple 
Clinic became a neutral out-
let where he could share and 
understand his feelings with a 
third-party person who held 
no stakes in the divorce. Siding 
with neither mom nor dad, the 
preteen was able to find reas-

surance and, most importantly, 
realize it was normal to feel the 
way he did.
While the child was reluctant 
to try therapy at first, he’s bene-
fited immensely from the care, 
and has even begun comforting 
other friends also going through 
divorce within their family. “For 
the first three months of the 
divorce, I felt my son was fine,
” 
explains his father. “But then I 
started noticing behaviors where 
he became very isolated.
”
The typically outgoing pre-
teen had become quiet and 
holding what his father calls 
“superficial conversations” 
where he didn’t want to explore 
what he was feeling.
Yet once he started talking 
with a therapist, those walls 
disappeared — and the healing 
process began. “He started get-
ting stuff out; he started sharing 
more,
” his father recalls.

THE DARK SIDE OF 
SOCIAL MEDIA
The example above is just one of 
many mental health care needs 
kids deal with today.
“I would love to say that 
everything is getting better, but 
we live in a really complicated 
time right now,
” explains Dr. 
Brooke Weingarden, who has 
worked at Birmingham Maple 
Clinic for 10 years and spe-
cializes in adolescent and child 
psychiatry.
While social media comes 
with numerous benefits — a 
connected world and having 
information available at the 
touch of your fingertips — it 
plays a dark role in mental 
health across all age groups, but 
even more so for our youngest 
generations who are extra sus-
ceptible to potentially triggering 
content and, of course, simply 
fitting in with others.
Weingarden explains that 
previous generations weren’t so 
readily exposed to world prob-

Between a global pandemic and ongoing wars, kids 
face increased mental health challenges.

Youth Mental Health 
Crises Are on the Rise
 

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Maple Clinic 
logo on the 
original building

