Dr. Meredith Gansner Delves Into 'Teen Depression Gone Viral'

Attending child psychiatrist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Meredith Gansner, stops by to discuss her important new book, Teen Depression Gone Viral: Why Kids Are More Vulnerable Than Ever & How You Can Protect Your Child’s Health and Happiness. In the book, Dr. Gansner writes about how social media and digital media use can negatively affect youth mental health, gives warning signs of depression that parents can look out for, and lists treatment options to help families with their troubled teen. According to Dr. Gansner, “…for kids who are struggling with depression or anxiety and even for their parents or guardians, the internet can be a really overwhelming place for a variety of different reasons, and so when Covid hit… because kids were online far more because of remote schooling, we were just seeing again and again issues related to things that happened online that were worsening underlying psychiatric conditions… I felt like we haven’t as a society… done enough to provide and research concrete evidence of how to tackle a variety of issues online and how to stay safe online so this book came out of my desire to provide more concrete guidance to parents in, I think, what can be a very overwhelming process and when your child has depression it’s incredibly challenging, but I think the digital aspect of it actually can make things even more confusing.”

While the book does focus mainly on how online media impacts adolescents, Dr. Gansner also warns parents to be mindful of what they themselves view on the internet because they may read conflicting advice on how best to help their child. “…that can be so overwhelming for parents to see all these different things that their child should be doing differently, and to try to do all of them it can make you feel like you’re failing your child if you aren’t able to make certain things happen…” Therefore, rather than searching all over the internet for accurate information, Dr. Gansner hopes the compilation of research she delivers in her book will provide the answers that families are seeking. She remarked, “This book I was hoping in part could help those kids because by and large, they don’t seem to be looked at as much in studies. It’s far less likely for people to do studies specifically in youth that have underlying psychiatric conditions. Most of the research is in the general adolescent or the young adult populations, and so I really wanted this book to be for those families that I see.”