Happy Nice Mall

For more than a year, while reporting on “The Inner Pandemic,” a new multi-part project by the Times investigating adolescent mental health, I had the opportunity to listen to heartbreaking candid accounts of self-harm, suicide, anxiety, and depression from families and young people. They were helping me do detective work to understand the experience of the younger generation in deep crisis.

But somewhere along the line, I realized that these families are doing their own daring detective work. They were involved in the journalism process to try to make sense of what was going on in their own homes to themselves or their children.

Last year I saw a striking example in a small town in New York. I was sitting in a restaurant with my reporter’s notebook in my hand, going through my notes when a waiter came and asked what I was doing. I told him where I was working and reporting on adolescent mental health.

“You should talk to my daughter,” he said.

The next day, I spoke to him and his teenage daughter, who had recently spent time in an inpatient center for anxiety and depression. As the girl sat down to snack on french fries, sitting next to her mother listening intently, she told the story of her struggle.

Her story gave me pause. He was hospitalized and treated, but nothing particularly stood out to me as the cause of his intense anxiety and depression. I had heard enough stories like his to realize something was missing. Then the girl turned to her mother and said, “Do you mind if we talk alone?” He asked.

Her mother agreed and went out. The teenager later revealed intensely personal details of his struggle that he was not yet ready to share with his mother for fear of creating anxiety. My mom later told me she felt like something good—”something very therapeutic”—was coming from the meeting. The parts he listened to confirmed what his daughter had told him, and my relationship with the family and previous reports helped him understand the issue better, he told me.

“I swore I knew my daughter like the back of my hand,” he said. Still grappling for full answers. “Looks like you can put the pieces together if you get enough pieces. I’m far from putting the whole puzzle together.”

By chat after chat, I have become a vessel for teens and parents to share their grief and confusion not just with me but with each other and to have their own voices heard.

Not everyone can identify the cause of the pain. One father recounted the last conscious words his daughter said to him before he died in the intensive care unit after a suicidal overdose: “‘I can see colours,'” he said. Our conversation took place just two weeks after his death. The father sobbed and thanked me for listening, but it was clear that he needed to hear and process mainly himself.

Another parent, a mother, shared with me the painful details of her daughter’s struggles with anxiety, depression, and suicide attempts. She wanted to know: What was I learning from experts working in adolescent mental health? Why were so many young people suffering these days?

A teenager fears that a sexual encounter will be known and his life will be ruined. He didn’t tell his parents, he said; He carried his fear like a ticking time bomb. He just needed to tell someone and wonder out loud what to do.

I told everything, spoke to dozens of young people, some in short conversations that shaped my thoughts but would not appear in this storyline. I talked to others over the months, as did M, who I met a year ago and shared their stories in one of the first articles in the series. M has always been outspoken, revealing that at some point they started hurting themselves again; I told M that I had to share this information with their mother with their consent, and I did.

After each conversation, I thanked the teens and parents for sharing so much of themselves. The most common response was: I’m telling you this in case it might help someone else take care of this issue.

Some wanted to vent their anger at a medical system they felt was unequipped to deal with the crisis. They wanted a measure of validation and justice. But with that said, I think they talked to me because they wanted to try to understand and heal themselves.