Youth mental health crisis
Subject in Mental Health
Youth mental health crisis has come up in 1 episode across 1 podcast in TMT, including Passion Struck with John R. Miles. 2 people have made recorded remarks about it.
What people said
Peter GrayAmerican evolutionary psychologist and author of Free to Learn and Restoring Childhood
Gray argues the 2010–2018 rise in youth distress was largely American and appeared elsewhere only in England and Sweden, which adopted similar schooling reforms.
“In other words, changes in young people's mental health tracks changes in how we do schooling”
Passion Struck with John R. Miles: Your Kids Don’t Need More Achievement. They Need More Freedom | Dr. Peter Gray - EP 826 (Sep 29, 2026) · Listen from 1:02:26
Gray says every study asking children what stresses them finds school pressure at the top.
“Every single study, school comes way out on top. School pressure, nothing else comes close to school pressure”
Passion Struck with John R. Miles: Your Kids Don’t Need More Achievement. They Need More Freedom | Dr. Peter Gray - EP 826 (Sep 29, 2026) · Listen from 23:49
Gray states that teen suicide rates quadrupled between 1950 and 1990 while anxiety and depression rose five- or six-fold.
“Almost linearly, the rate of suicide quadrupled during that period for teenagers, rates of anxiety, depression”
Passion Struck with John R. Miles: Your Kids Don’t Need More Achievement. They Need More Freedom | Dr. Peter Gray - EP 826 (Sep 29, 2026) · Listen from 17:32
John R. MilesHost of the Passion Struck podcast and author of The Mattering Effect
Miles hypothesizes that the crisis stems from a long erosion of childhood freedom and agency extending into institutions that treat people as utilities.
“they're all eroding more and more of our individuality and treating us less as a human and more as a utility”
Passion Struck with John R. Miles: Your Kids Don’t Need More Achievement. They Need More Freedom | Dr. Peter Gray - EP 826 (Sep 29, 2026) · Listen from 1:04:56
Podcasts
- Passion Struck with John R. Miles · 1 episode
Episodes
Your Kids Don’t Need More Achievement. They Need More Freedom | Dr. Peter Gray - EP 826Passion Struck with John R. Miles · Sep 29, 2026 · 1 h 17 min
Evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray tells John R. Miles why children need free play and independence, blaming school pressure rather than smartphones for the youth mental health crisis.