When depression and anxiety engulf her, the 16-year-old girl says she “feels like there’s a dark hole traveling inside of me, that I’m alone, that I’m stuck.” The pandemic intensified those feelings as the closure of her school further isolated her from friends, resources and a familiar routine.
She is not alone.
Nationally, young people across the nation increasingly are reporting rising rates of mental distress amid the global coronavirus pandemic.
While COVID-19 is a public health crisis, it’s created a parallel epidemic involving mental health — especially among younger people.
The teen shared her experience Thursday during a virtual discussion hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), “Adolescent Mental Health in the Time of COVID-19.” The statistics and stories were chilling, and speak to the need to destigmatize mental illness in our society.
Read more at Richmond Times-Dispatch.
