For parents of teenagers, adolescence can be challenging, but to a brain scientist it's a time of breathtaking development. And it's a "window of opportunity" on the way to becoming an adult.
While adult overdoses surged in the last decades, teens hadn't seen the same kind of death rates. But now fatal overdoses nearly doubled in one year and continued to rise in 2021.
Globally, boys and young men made up two-thirds of all deaths among young people in 2019. A recent report finds that many such deaths in this "neglected" age group are preventable.
When schools closed last spring, children with severe mental illnesses were cut off from the services they'd come to rely on. Many have since spiraled into emergency rooms and even police custody.
