3348 A new epidemic among teens?

The Dec. 28 issue of New England Journal of Medicine (355:26) has a series of articles on mental illness in teens. Now, it's not that new diseases can't arise--afterall, when my grandmother was a child, virtually no one got polio. It became an epidemic in the 20th century because sanitation improved and children no longer had the harmless mild type. Still, as my class prepares for its 50th reunion next summer, I am sort of wondering why we students didn't see mental illness among our classmates (there were a few teachers I sort of wondered about, however). The lead article suggests the screening of all teens to catch the "silent epidemic of mental illness among teenagers" which is leaving them vulnerable to emotional, social, and academic impairments in later life.

I'm sure if my friends and I had had screening, that the usual anxieties about grades, or mood disorders from squabbles with parents, fatigue from bad schedules or bruised and broken hearts from dating, or poor social skills resulting in rejection by the "in-crowd" would have rated us off the charts for feelings of hopelessness and depression. And I didn't know a single person in my high school who had an eating disorder or a drug/alcohol problem to the extent that we began to see in the late 60s and early 70s. However, I think pharmacologic intervention for huge numbers of teens who might have otherwise passed through a phase of sadness or emptiness without medical help, is a pretty high price. We don't even know the long term results for adults. Does the phrase "follow the money" come to mind for anyone but me?