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  • Correspondence
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Tuning the default mode network with behavioral interventions to address the youth mental health crisis

Nature Mental Health volume 1, pages 695–696 (2023)Cite this article

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The surging demand for adolescent mental health care has been declared a crisis by the US Surgeon General, UK and European health officials and pediatric health organizations. Demand for mental health services has broadly outstripped capacity, reducing access to current gold-standard treatments, which, although lifesaving for many, are only effective for a minority of those who use them.

Thus, scalable interventions — ideally deployable within and outside clinical settings — are needed to reduce suffering and improve functional outcomes for adolescents. Symptoms of anxiety and depression — which frequently present as comorbidities with suicidal thoughts and behavior and/or problem substance use — worsened by social isolation and trauma, are at the center of this crisis. Intensive social media use may also contribute to distress. In adolescents, it is often not known whether these non-specific, transdiagnostic symptoms will be self-limited or represent precursors to mood, psychotic, anxiety, trauma-related or substance-use disorders.

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Author notes

  1. A. Eden Evins

    Present address: Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli

  2. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli

  3. Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research, McGovern Institute, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli & A. Eden Evins

  4. Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli

Authors
  1. Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
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  2. A. Eden Evins
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Contributions

S.W.-G. and A.E.E. contributed equally to the writing of this Correspondence.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., Evins, A.E. Tuning the default mode network with behavioral interventions to address the youth mental health crisis. Nat. Mental Health 1, 695–696 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-023-00122-z

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