Oh, that pesky, underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. It causes so many problems. Including anxiety. You thought that the SATs were stressing out your kid? Nope. Blame the amygdala.
Different regions and circuits of the brain mature at very different rates. It turns out that the brain circuit for processing fear — the amygdala — is precocious and develops way ahead of the prefrontal cortex, the seat of reasoning and executive control. This means that adolescents have a brain that is wired with an enhanced capacity for fear and anxiety, but is relatively underdeveloped when it comes to calm reasoning.
Apt. 11d 
“Parents have to realize that adolescent anxiety is to be expected, and to comfort their teenagers — and themselves — by reminding them that they will grow up and out of it soon enough.”
Yes, sure, that will go over really well with teens, “reminding them that they will grow up and out of it soon enough.” My teen always is perfectly calmed when reminded that she will just grow out of her behavior.
Tone deaf comments like that one always make me worry about the rest of the information. Presumably, Friedman has talked to teens, since he runs a psychopharm clinic. If so, how could he think that telling them they’ll grow out of something would be helpful? It might help us, and in fact, it’s something I try to remind myself, especially as they grow to the point where you can become confused about their level of maturity.
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Yep – right up there with the ‘good choices’ language. Every teen knows the only possible ‘good choices’ are the ones someone else has decided they should make. Thus, all they hear is “do what I say”.
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Yep, bj and Tulip.
I suspect the person who said that stuff about “reminding them that they will grow up and out of it soon enough” is more on the “pharm” side rather than on the counseling side, which explains the tone deafness.
Late tweens/early teens hate having their concerns and problems minimized. Heck, we ALL hate having our concerns and problems minimized.
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It was a logical point. I presume some people start to worry about their anxiety; thus, reassuring them that their level of anxiety is a natural stage of human development must be more reassuring than telling them they should worry. At a psychopharmacological clinic, he’s not seeing people who have garden-variety fear of heights or whatnot. He’s seeing people in whom it’s a life-altering state of mind.
Adolescence, for a brain specialist, presumably runs to the age of 25 or so, the age at which the brain is thought to be mature. So he’s not talking about how to talk with typically developing teens.
If anxiety is a natural part of young adulthood, from say 13 to 25, then I would be very wary of meddling with it with medication. He has a good point that stimulants make people more anxious; on the other hand, antidepressants may make young people less anxious, but what if it interferes with the process of learning through fear? Perhaps teenagers are anxious about the SATs and social jockeying at school because that’s the way they’re wired.
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Actually, he seems to be concerned over the prescription of psycho-stimulants. I suspect that the issue is that he’s spending a lot of time talking to people who are talking to teens, and not to the teens themselves. That’s the issue with a lot of education reform that isn’t classroom/teacher based, too. Teens are a lot easier to understand in theory than in practice.
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Is it fair to say that people who actually know stuff don’t have the time to write articles or do interviews about it?
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Until they retire, of course.
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No. I’d say many academics consider participating in relevant debate and education of the public as part of their jobs, too. And, some institutions, like the National Science Foundation, aggressively encourage outreach/education, even scoring research grant funding on the criterion.
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