The Adolescent Thriving Collaborative helps families, schools, and communities build environments where adolescents can flourish. We translate the latest neuroscience into practical knowledge and skills that young people, parents, educators, and youth-serving professionals can use right now.
Interpersonal experience shapes the mind as it continues to develop throughout the lifespan…Interactions with the environment, especially relationships with other people, directly shape the development of the brain’s structure and function.
Dr. Daniel J. Siegel
Anxiety, depression, and loneliness among adolescents are rising. At the same time, adverse childhood experiences (called ACES) are extremely common—over 80% of adolescents have experienced at least one, with rates significantly higher among girls, young people of color, and LGBTQ+ youth. Yet here’s what we know: while trauma is pervasive, so is the possibility of healing. And, we don’t heal in isolation we heal in relationships, in circles, and in community.
Diana Fosha, PhD
The quality of relationships with peers, family, and caring adults is one of the most robust predictors of mental health outcomes. Isolation and social rejection activates the same brain regions as physical pain and impacts the brain’s ability to learn.
Trauma and chronic stress can disrupt healthy development and make learning difficult. Crucially, supportive relationships and positive childhood experiences buffer these impacts and help the brain and body recover.
Adolescents thrive when they feel respected by peers and adults, have meaningful opportunities to explore what matters to them, and can shape and contribute to the communities and world they live in.
Young people who ‘know who they are’, who develop an integrated identity, an internal compass that they can use to make decisions consistent with their values, beliefs, and goals, have increased well-being and resilience to deal with life’s stressors.
School climate, family relationships and dynamics, neighborhood safety, systemic inequities, discrimination, historical marginalization, and intergenerational trauma all profoundly shape adolescent well-being. Young people do best when they have access to attuned caregiving, physical and psychological safety, resourced, engaging, and culturally affirming learning environments, and opportunities and relationships that support their development.
Therapy is critical—sometimes lifesaving—for teens who are struggling. Yet most adolescents experiencing mental health challenges don’t have access to or won’t seek one-on-one therapy with a trained clinician.
This is why our work extends beyond the therapy room. Well-being emerges from our relationships with family, ancestors, and culture. It’s shaped by the systemic conditions and structural arrangements in which we live, work, and play. We can’t expect young people to be well within systems that create and perpetuate harm.
The most promising path forward is creating ecosystems of care—supporting families and building communities filled with relationships with safe, attuned adults and opportunities for young people to safely learn, explore, and grow.
