Meg Jay wrote the book on treatments for twentysomethings. She explains how young adult brains are more likely to think catastrophically—and feel negatively—than those of older adults, and they have less experience managing those thoughts and feelings.
Meg Jay is a developmental clinical psychologist specializing in young adult mental health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and on NPR and BBC. She gave a wildly successful TED Talk, “Why 30 Is Not the New 20.” Jay is on faculty at the University of Virginia and maintains her own private practice.
Below, Jay shares five key insights from her new book, The Twentysomething Treatment: A Revolutionary Remedy for an Uncertain Age. Listen to the audio version—read by Jay herself—in the Next Big Idea App.
OUR TWENTIES ARE WHEN UNCERTAINTY IS AT ITS HIGHEST AND MENTAL HEALTH IS AT ITS LOWEST.
Young adults need an age-specific approach that advocates for context over criticism, development over diagnosis, and skills over pills. This is important because so many twentysomethings are struggling—50% say they are anxious, 40% feel depressed, 30% feel suicidal, and 20% have problems with substance use—yet as a culture, we are not sure what to think or do. Perhaps, it is said, young adults are snowflakes who melt when life turns up the heat. Or maybe, some argue, they’re triggered for no reason at all. Yet even as we trivialize the struggles of twentysomethings, we are quick to pathologize them and to hand out diagnoses and medications.
Read the complete Fast Company article: https://www.fastcompany.com/91129802/its-not-you-being-twentysomething-is-tough-heres-how-to-find-hope-when-the-struggle-is-real-according-to-a-psychologist
