This week, The Atlantic posted an article about the four forces propelling the rising rates of depression in teens. As a mother of a teen boy who recently shared that he was feeling depressed and whose grades dropped in his favorite AP and Honors classes from A’s to a D and an F for no apparent reason during peak college consideration time, I was compelled to read the article.

The article by Derek Thompson stated:

The United States is experiencing an extreme teenage mental-health crisis. According to a new CDC study, from 2009 to 2021, the share of American high-school students who say they feel “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 44 percent. This is the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded.

The government survey of almost 8,000 high-school students conducted in the first six months of 2021 found a great deal of variation in mental health among different groups.