I could not stand being home doing work, because I was in my best friend's soul.

We had 14 people in one house and half of those people are kids.

It's just mild. I just couldn't focus.

Everything is hard because there's no end to it. It's really sad to see what was supposed to be

like the best years of your life go down the tubes.

That was E who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and before that you heard K who lives in New Orleans.

They're both 16 years old. We're not using their full names because the topic of this episode is

how adolescents are struggling with mental health. And you're going to hear from them as well

as some therapists about why this time has been so tough, especially for some teenagers,

and how caring adults can help. Amanda Kamenets, a reporter for NPR, and this is a parenting episode

of LifeKit. It's been about a year now since schools closed all over the country.

Things are still pretty far from normal in a lot of ways, whether that sports or parties or travel

or jobs, and all of this is taking its toll on teenagers.

What I've seen happen in 25 years of never seen this is I've seen my anxious kids become more

and more depressed. The level of suicidal and amcning cases is the highest it's been.

So that's a listen-nevil scene, a therapist who works with teens in the DC area,

and she's describing what she's been seeing in her practice. And she's one of four different

youth advocates who actually have reached out to me in the past several months and said,

Hey, your reporter, can you please do a story about this? I need you to know the teens are not okay.

And you know what that also means is that if you who's listening, someone you know is going through

it right now, you're not alone. This is so common. And there are so many teenagers like E

and frankly, people of all ages who are having some really tough times and some late nights.

...