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Tackling the mental-health crisis in young people

Despite growing awareness that children and teenagers can get depressed, substantial gaps remain in diagnosis and treatment.
  1. Emily Sohn

    1. Emily Sohn is a freelance journalist in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Illustration: Kim Salt

In 43 schools across the United Kingdom, groups of teenagers and pre-teens practised paying attention, being in the moment and savouring what is good in life. During weekly sessions that lasted 30 to 50 minutes, more than 3,600 children worked through these teacher-led exercises in a mindfulness-based intervention, called the .b programme. It was supposed to help the children deal with stress, nerves and their worries in ten weekly sessions. But a year after the intervention, the 11- to 14-year-olds in the experiment were no better off on a scale of depression and well-being than those who were taught the usual social-emotional curriculum1. In fact, says psychiatrist Willem Kuyken at the University of Oxford, UK, there was some evidence that children with existing mental-health problems might even have got a little worse.

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Nature 608, S39-S41 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02206-9

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Depression, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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