I see you, and it makes me so happy to see you. There is such a disconnect between what we say America is about and what it is right now. True freedom is the freedom to be who we are, and it hurts my heart so much that in some parts of this country, it is unsafe for trans people to do that right now.
There is a unique kind of pain in losing your mind, not just once, but over and over. Losing your perception of reality, of your emotions, of your closest relationships-both across months and multiple times a day. Knowing deep down that something is wrong but being unable to stop it.
The number of suicides per 100,000 young people ages 10 to 24 declined by nearly 12 percent, from 11 to 9.7, between 2021 and 2024. The decrease was driven largely by reductions among young men, whose suicide levels fell by nearly 15 percent, while suicides among young women declined by about 2 percent.
Words such as 'relationship,' 'affair,' 'involvement,' or 'seeing each other' imply mutuality and consent. In the context of child sexual abuse, these implications are false. A child cannot legally or developmentally consent to sexual activity with an adult. Describing abuse using relational language risks distorting the inherent power imbalance and shifting perceived responsibility away from the adult perpetrator.
Being a target of negative experiences by one's peers has consistently been related to decreased self-worth, poor engagement in school, and worse grades among children and adolescents. One of the most consistent of these consequences is depressive symptoms. Put simply, kids' mental health is strongly impacted by being picked on by their classmates at school. Our recently published study examined data from over 100,000 Brazilian adolescents to disentangle how pernicious the effect of being victimized was on reports of symptoms of depression.