Embark on an eye-opening journey with Dr. Gene Buresin, the vanguard of child and adolescent psychiatry, as we traverse the landscape of youth stress and resilience. With a career that has reshaped mental health perspectives over the past forty years, Dr. Buresin candidly recounts his initial hesitations about medical school, his chance retention by a dean, and the path that led him to pediatrics and ultimately psychiatry. His narrative comes alive with tales of inspiration from the field's trailblazers and reveals his instrumental role in shaping Harvard Medical School's curriculum and spearheading the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds. This episode lays bare the complexities of children and adolescents grappling with today's societal challenges, as we retrace Dr. Buresin's pivotal contributions to their mental well-being.
In the throes of a growing mental health crisis, we navigate the delicate topic of youth loneliness and its spikes amid a post-pandemic world. Generation Z faces an unprecedented battle with isolation, escalating rates of depression, anxiety, and a worrisome increase in suicide. Our discussion shines a light on the Surgeon General's clarion call for fortified youth mental health services, emphasizing the necessity for enhanced access to care, the promise of telehealth, and the integration of support within schools and communities. Dr. Buresin's expertise is our guide as we examine the ramifications of this societal epidemic and the urgent strategies needed for intervention.
Lastly, we tackle the imperative of public mental health education and the vital role it plays in prevention and early intervention. The conversation turns to the startling statistic that half of psychiatric disorders commence by age 14, underscoring a dire need for parental and caregiver enlightenment. Dr. Buresin weighs in on the hurdles of securing affordable mental health care, the provider shortage crisis, and the innovative approaches such as peer counseling that could pave the way forward. We close by addressing the dangers of online misinformation, particularly regarding sensitive issues like eating disorders, and urge listeners to connect with trusted resources like the Meninger Clinic's Mind Dive Podcast for authentic conversations about mental health.
Follow The Menninger Clinic on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new Mind Dive episodes. To submit a topic for discussion, email podcast@menninger.edu. If you are a new or regular listener, please leave us a review on your favorite listening platform!
Visit The Menninger Clinic website to learn more about The Menninger Clinic’s research and leadership role in mental health.
Embark on an eye-opening journey with Dr. Gene Buresin, the vanguard of child and adolescent psychiatry, as we traverse the landscape of youth stress and resilience. With a career that has reshaped mental health perspectives over the past forty years, Dr. Buresin candidly recounts his initial hesitations about medical school, his chance retention by a dean, and the path that led him to pediatrics and ultimately psychiatry. His narrative comes alive with tales of inspiration from the field's trailblazers and reveals his instrumental role in shaping Harvard Medical School's curriculum and spearheading the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds. This episode lays bare the complexities of children and adolescents grappling with today's societal challenges, as we retrace Dr. Buresin's pivotal contributions to their mental well-being.
In the throes of a growing mental health crisis, we navigate the delicate topic of youth loneliness and its spikes amid a post-pandemic world. Generation Z faces an unprecedented battle with isolation, escalating rates of depression, anxiety, and a worrisome increase in suicide. Our discussion shines a light on the Surgeon General's clarion call for fortified youth mental health services, emphasizing the necessity for enhanced access to care, the promise of telehealth, and the integration of support within schools and communities. Dr. Buresin's expertise is our guide as we examine the ramifications of this societal epidemic and the urgent strategies needed for intervention.
Lastly, we tackle the imperative of public mental health education and the vital role it plays in prevention and early intervention. The conversation turns to the startling statistic that half of psychiatric disorders commence by age 14, underscoring a dire need for parental and caregiver enlightenment. Dr. Buresin weighs in on the hurdles of securing affordable mental health care, the provider shortage crisis, and the innovative approaches such as peer counseling that could pave the way forward. We close by addressing the dangers of online misinformation, particularly regarding sensitive issues like eating disorders, and urge listeners to connect with trusted resources like the Meninger Clinic's Mind Dive Podcast for authentic conversations about mental health.
Follow The Menninger Clinic on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new Mind Dive episodes. To submit a topic for discussion, email podcast@menninger.edu. If you are a new or regular listener, please leave us a review on your favorite listening platform!
Visit The Menninger Clinic website to learn more about The Menninger Clinic’s research and leadership role in mental health.
Welcome to the Mind Dive podcast brought to you by the Mendinger Clinic, a national leader in mental health care. We're your hosts, Dr Bob Boland and Dr Carrie Harrell Twice monthly.
Speaker 2:We dive into mental health topics that fascinate us as clinical professionals and we explore those unexpected dilemmas that arise while treating patients. Join us for all of this, plus the latest research and perspectives from the minds of distinguished colleagues near and far. Let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Today we have Dr Gene Buresin and we're just so happy to have him. He's worked as the Program Director for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry for 32 years, his teacher at Massachusetts General Hospital. He's a senior educator and child and adolescent psychiatry. He worked as a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr Buresin is the creator of the Developing Physician the lifelong integration of personal and professional growth with sensitive, compassionate care, which is a core curriculum required of first and second year students at Harvard Medical School. He currently serves as the Executive Director for the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds, which is part of Massachusetts General Hospital. He's also the co-host of shrinking it down Mental Health Made Simple Podcast.
Speaker 2:I know which is already Podcasts are Exactly I think it's a more popular podcast than ours. Dr Buresin, I can't possibly believe that you worked somewhere for 32 years, because you do not look old enough to have worked and been somewhere for 32 years and now be retired.
Speaker 3:I'm not retired and I've been there for 45 years. Actually, I was a resident in 1978. What yeah?
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 3:I came to MGH in 1978 after I did an internship in pediatrics in 77. Good genes. What can you say?
Speaker 1:Good genes stop it, stop it Okay.
Speaker 2:Welcome. We're so excited to talk to you.
Speaker 1:Yes, thanks so much for talking with us.
Speaker 3:It's great to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to start like how we usually start and just tell us a little bit about your career, just how you became interested in child psychiatry.
Speaker 3:Well, I went to medical school after being a music major and was ambivalent actually about medical school and I tried to drop out, but fortunately I-.
Speaker 2:You tried to drop out of medical school and failed at dropping out.
Speaker 3:I failed at dropping out. Yeah, I mean, I was at Penn and they had this so-called new curriculum where you'd see patients from the first day, which was terrific. But it was still very much like middle school and I had come out of the 60s being kind of an activist and we were dealing with the Vietnam War and civil rights and women's lib, and medical school was just difficult. So I was playing with a Citarist at the time and he said well, come on, in the philosophy department we have an opening. And I said well, I've only taken a couple of courses. He says that doesn't matter. So I called a dean and the dean said don't go, We'll put you in an MD-PhD program and you can take as long as you want. So I took two years, did a master's in philosophy and then I went back to medical school because it just seemed to me that academia was too isolated.
Speaker 1:Just carry, just so you know. And most people don't get that kind of deal from the medical school, so it gives you an idea of where the standing probably was. Yeah, absolutely, I'm going to say value. I think they would have wished me well.
Speaker 3:He was very kind and actually I needed that time. I needed a couple of years of a gap year. But when I went back it was wonderful and I fell in love with pediatrics and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and at that time I was really enamored going into pediatrics. But I also loved the psychosocial aspects of pediatrics and when I was at Penn Aaron Beck was writing his book on depression, on cognitive therapy of depression. He was just writing it, so I'd sit in with the residents with him, and I would sit in with Jay Haley, you know, who does systemic family therapy and the power tactics of Jesus Christ, and then I would sit in with the residents, with Salmanutian who was having meals without erectics. I mean it was kind of glorious psychiatry.
Speaker 3:So I was torn, so I matched in pediatrics. But also, since this was pre-match dates, I made a deal with John Boris who was training director at MGH and he said well, come on up and come into psychiatry whenever you're ready. After a year of pediatrics. It seemed to me that well, actually I met with a guy named Al Solnit who wrote a book with Anna Freud, the Best Inches of the Child, and now said to me well, do you want to treat asthma and otitis media, or do you want to do family therapy? And I said are you kidding me? I said I don't want to do family therapy. He said get out of here.
Speaker 2:Get out of here.
Speaker 3:You don't need three years of pediatrics. You can always pick up beads later. And I did leave after my first year and I came to MGH and I did my adult residency there and we didn't have a child residency, so I did that at Children's and then I started the child residency in 85 at MGH.
Speaker 2:That is incredibly cool. Also, some cool people that you were getting to meet. I mean, those are.
Speaker 3:As a medical student. They were icons, yeah.
Speaker 2:They were yeah, these are all yeah just people who are right around textbooks and Gosh.
Speaker 1:So there's so many things you're an expert on, but we're going to concentrate on the work you've been doing with children and with resilience and stress. We certainly hear a lot in the news about children being Like, more stressed than ever in adolescence, and Well, I don't know if Dr Bresson would know this I work with our adolescents and young adults.
Speaker 2:That's my population, and so I mean also just seeing it clinically, the Just the level of pressure. I was talking to a patient yesterday about how Like they listed off their kind of high school academic resume over a 4.0 average, lots of extracurriculars, I mean just like a really impressive resume. They did not get into a lot of colleges. That I was surprised by and I was like, goodness gracious, you have to really be pounding yourself in high school, I think, to get into a good college these days and just the pressure this is what I'm thinking about. It's just like the pressure on our young people.
Speaker 3:And you know, 60% of our young people go to college and the 40% that don't, you know, often have to help support their families. Yeah, yeah, make a living on their own. So they're under a huge amount of stress too. But I think you're right on target. I mean, one of the sources of stress are these huge pressures and the kids are over scheduled. They have to do community service, they have to do high level academics, they have to play sports, they have to work, they have family obligations, you know, and they don't have time that the young teenage brain needs to actually process information. So that's one major source of stress.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting point that I haven't. I wish I could spend more time on that, but I know we have a lot to cover. But I mean, certainly, like my colleagues, you talk a lot about sort of the over-scheduling of children and what the ramifications of that are.
Speaker 3:Well, I remember when I was in high school I would be bored on a Saturday and a Sunday and I would ride my bike around looking for a pickup basketball game. You know, I mean, the kids today don't have that luxury. They're working all weekend long on their homework or their community service or their internships. They don't have time to hang out with each other and they don't have time to actually kick back and just process. You know.
Speaker 1:Now I can't appreciate this Like my right, my life was. I get home from school and my mother would push me out the door and say go play and come back for dinner. But, and there's nothing more fun than reminiscing about our child ourselves and talk about kids these days, but it is. But I mean you actually, when the way you put it it makes you sound more important.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm kind of middle ground, I imagine, between y'all and the, the current youth. And when I was in high school I mean I did theater and then I did cross country and track I was pretty busy, but I still had plenty of time to like reflect and. I had lots of crushers on boys and I was just like I'd love the time to be.
Speaker 3:Me too. I mean, I was editor of the yearbook, I ran track, I was playing in the jug band, you know, and I still, and I still had a lot of time to just hang out and shoot hoops and just spend time with friends.
Speaker 2:So one of my very first internship practicum when I was doing my PhD was doing IEP testing, like doing the academic testing for IEPs for a high school and I remember and it was a pretty wealthy high school and like these families would be like I just don't understand why he's not able to concentrate. They must be ADHD and they'd like really go at it. And then I'd start talking to this kid. You know they'd be in every advanced class. They're in water polo there and you know student government and mock government what a sound called model UN. They're in all these things and they're just so exhausted and they're so stressed and they're like having a nervous breakdown. The parents are like can we just get this kid on Adderall and keep moving and grooving Like this is clearly ADHD.
Speaker 3:But you know there are other things too. I think that make it much more stressful. Now A lot of people blame digital media and social media is a source of stress. I mean, many teenagers spend two to two and a half hours a day on their digital media and it's high drama and there's FOMO or fear of missing out. It's a 24 hour source of stress, but we're all digital hostages. On the other hand, in times like during the pandemic, during lockdown, it's a real blessing because you can make social connections. So it's both a blessing and a curse, but it does. It is stressful and when I go into a room with a bunch of adolescents I was spokesperson for sad for a few years students against destructive decisions, and they're like 500 high school kids in the room and I said how many of you are? How many of you think digital media is stressful and every hand goes up? How many of you were addicted to it? Every hand goes up. How many of you can put it down?
Speaker 2:No hands, no no hands, mine's not up. No hands, go up.
Speaker 3:So and then there are other things in this generation to its credit. I mean, young people are worried about the future. We're living in tremendous, tumultuous times. They're worried about climate change, they're worried about the economy and jobs. They worry about the dangers in the world, like mass shootings. They're worried about extremists. Is it safe to go to a concert? Is it safe to go to the mall? Is it safe to go to their place of worship? Yeah, you know, is it going to be a nuclear war? I mean, they're worried about the Middle East, you know.
Speaker 3:So there are so many and, and I must say, without getting political, our leaders, our politicians are. They don't debate Like in the old days, for example. People listening, except older folks like me, might not remember, but I remember listening to the debates with William F Buckley Jr oh gosh, who was so articulate and so brilliant but so much so politically right wing, and Gore Vidal, who was this flamboyant, but they were civilized, they had civil conversations, they could debate and they could actually talk about issues. And our kids today are not hearing that. They're hearing this inflammatory stuff. You know, the result of all of this is high levels of stress and resulting in sleep deprivation, which in itself causes high levels of stress. Use of screens at night which keep people awake and disrupt sleep. Yeah, we're diet, you know. Lack of exercise, so you know if they're on sports they're getting exercise. But and difficulty fitting in what can help stress, which is self care, meditation, exercise, hanging out, relaxing, listening to music, playing music, doing journaling, doing creative arts. They just don't have time to take care of themselves and we all need to promote self care for both kids as well as as parents, caregivers and professionals.
Speaker 2:I'm going back to something you just said about, like the modeling, the modeling of healthy debate, the modeling of even, I think, appropriate self care and boundaries. Another thing I'm curious or would want to hear you speak on is also like the modeling and information that parents and people, caregivers, the youth, get around public mental health education and just understanding mental health and and curious how that's also impacting our young people.
Speaker 3:Well, well it is. Let me come to that in just one more second, because I want to mention one other aspect of stress before I address public mental health, which is so important, which is what you guys are doing. Right, and very few people are actually giving good information to the public. But we are in an epidemic of loneliness and with the Surgeon General, in his latest advisory just this year, talked about an epidemic of loneliness. And so it turns out that Gen Z, 11 to 26, is the loneliest generation, not only in our society but ever, and that you would think that, with all of the possibilities that there would, would would not be loneliness, that they'd be well connected, but they're not. And it's partly because of all of these factors that we just talked about, because of all the things they have to do and because of lack of time and because of their pressures.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:There's loneliness. The consequences of loneliness and feelings of isolation are emotional fallout, such as depression, and increased risk of suicidal thinking or sleep inability to self-regulate. That means you know emotional over-reading, you know going for the carbs, excessive use of substances, smoking or vaping in the service of soothing unbearable feelings and medical problems. And there's a lot of data to show that autoimmune illness, the diabetes, that heart, heart disease may all well be linked and a weaker immune system. That's probably been studied the most as a result of loneliness. So as we talk about the role of public mental health, I think we need to add loneliness into a major source of stress in our, in our, in our case.
Speaker 1:Well it's. I think it's important because you're pointing out how this affects things clinically as well. I mean, stress is one thing that's playing out, as you point out, both in mental illness and in physical illness.
Speaker 2:There's so something to say about these kids who are kind of coming out of the pandemic, like they lost major chunks of high school and some of the socialization they might have gotten in high school, or they lost major chunks of middle school, like because that tends to be the group that I'm working with right now that they had these massive, important developmental times in which they ended up really isolated and then the impact that's having on connection now it really is. This is an incredibly lonely group of people.
Speaker 2:I have really seen that in my work that makes so much sense to me.
Speaker 3:That's so true, but I think if we look back the the rates of depression, anxiety, stress, loneliness and suicidal thinking was escalating long before the pandemic. So if you go back to the CDC data and you look from 2006 onward, you just see, in the increasing rates of all of these mental health disorders, suicide rates tripled for the 10 to 14 year olds since then, and so there was a process brewing and escalating and then bam, the pandemic hits. It was like a huge hit to an already vulnerable population, and not just the kids, but parents and caregivers. They got hit too and they were isolated too and they had to kind of work remotely, they had to take care of the house, they had to take care of their families, they had to take care of themselves and they had to hopefully pay attention to their young people and structure their learning. So you're absolutely spot on when you said that the pandemic was a major factor. But it was happening already. It was happening already, right, and they just fanned the flames. So we're paying the price for that now.
Speaker 1:Certainly the most dramatic thing to hear is about the rates of suicide. And do you want to say more about that? I mean, what's going on with that?
Speaker 3:Well, they've been increasing steadily, as I said, between 1999 and 2014, which was a CDC data. That's when it tripled with 10 to 14 year olds and, interestingly, with middle-aged women, and the rates for girls went up much higher. Even more alarming is the latest data. There was a study at Harvard which is really a virtual reality. We use this. There is no place, but anyway. Between 2000 and 2017, suicide rates rose by almost 50% among teens aged 15 to 19. And about 36% 35%, 36% among those 20 to 24. But what's fascinating about it is that among males, 15 to 19, it jumped about 15% yearly from 2015 to 17. And this was the first time that male suicides were greater than females. And it turns out that between 2000 and 2017, which was pre-COVID, there were more than 6,000 suicides yearly among 15 to 24 year olds, and so it's been a trend, and there's lots of thoughts about why the rates have gone up so high, but nonetheless, we need more data, we need more research.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 2:Should we circle back to?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's talking about what can be done and some of the things that you're doing as well. As far as what should we do under the help teams and stuff through giving all the stress, but I think we're going to do much more like the systems that you're on Sure and then, assuming that society is not going to change dramatically in the next few years, we're not going to stop sending kids to lessons and things like that, or social media and other things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right You're not going to turn on social media Right, we're all going to remain digital hostages. So it's interesting that the Surgeon General in 2022 came out with an advisory about the fact that we're in a youth mental health epidemic. Actually, it was in December of 21. He and the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Mental Health and Psychiatry and the Children's Hospital Association all noted that we are in a state of a national epidemic and they made recommendations, including really wonderful things like greater access to care, greater use of telehealth, embedded care in schools and communities, improved workforce because you know, there are only 8,000 child psychiatrist and about 4,000 child psychologists nationally for 14 to 20 million young people that really need it, and maybe 120,000 social workers, but we don't know how many of them are actually doing direct clinical service and how many are, you know, embedded in schools. But even with those numbers, so it's short and additional services.
Speaker 3:But the one thing to his credit, I mean all of these things are wonderful, but the one thing that was absent was the role of public mental health education, and when you think about it, public health education saves millions of lives. Think about the role that when, when there was public health education about pap smears, mammograms, sunblock seat belts, secondhand smoke car seats. Millions and millions of lives were saved, but there has never been a major public mental health campaign in this country. The only one that everybody remembers is that fried egg in the cast iron frying pan.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, A mind is a terrible thing to waste or something.
Speaker 2:No, it's your mind, the mind on drugs.
Speaker 3:This is your brain on drugs, and that was there which failed miserably. And the other one, made by the ad council, was friends, don't let friends drive drunk. But you know, given the extraordinarily prevalence of psychiatric disorders, one in two people during the course of their lifetime will have a psychiatric disorder At any one point in time. One in four will have one and 50% begin before age 14 and 75% begin by age 26. So getting to youth, which means getting to parents and caregivers first, because they're the ones that need to be educated first, is absolutely critical for prevention, for early intervention and for de-stigmatization of mental illness. It is preventable and, although most people don't know this, it's highly treatable. I mean, we've got about as good a good. You know remission rates, as you know atrial fibrillation, or you know, I mean it's more common than strep throat, and we can, we can take care of it.
Speaker 1:So so I think it's important to emphasize that gene because it I don't think people get that part, they don't just that these things are that this, that this is all very treatable if we can get people to treatment.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, if you think about it, I mean depression, anxiety and various forms of anxiety, just to mention two. You know we've got about a 66%, about two thirds of people, maybe 70%, can be brought into remission with a combination of psychotherapy medications, of changing lifestyles, of family therapy and various different forms of treatment, which is about as good as it gets. I mean, that's about what we get with treating hypertension and treating diabetes. I mean, most illnesses like ours are chronic or lifelong.
Speaker 2:The thing that's standing out to me, though, even in like the examples with seatbelts and other things and with example the diabetes, is that this kind of treatment is harder to find and that there's not as many providers and it's more expensive. Yes, and I think that's the thing I think about it. You know, when I have people in my own life saying my kids struggling do you have recommendations for therapists, but also that aren't that expensive, or you know, gosh, we'd kind of struggle to afford that and finding time for it, and we'd have to pull them out of school. And I mean, I think that's maybe one of the things on my mind is that the maybe the lack of public education too, has something to do with that. The solution isn't as clear of like. So do this, and it's like go to treatment. Where, with who? With these?
Speaker 3:Well, okay, so let's look at the workforce. I mean, one of the things that we're woefully inadequate is using college graduates as peer counselors, For example. Peer support.
Speaker 2:Now.
Speaker 3:I have an outreach program. I got a large sum of money 24 years ago to have outreach workers in three MGH community clinics and we hire VA, you know, college graduates and even within schools, even in sad high school students, college students, kids in the community and learn to be peer counselors. Teachers can learn to be, you know, mentors and counselors and then they have, of course they have to have supervisors as backing them up. But you know, look, how effective the 12-step program is. I mean, people don't realize this. 75% of folks with addictions recover. Most people think if you've got substance use disorder, you are gone, you are a goner. And it's true that there are many deaths from substance use. But the fact is is that AA and the 12-step program has been incredibly valuable, successful and important and they're not trained at all. So imagine if you just train people how to be sponsors, mentors, peer counselors, and if they if they, you know if they need called ghostbusters, you got a professional that's kind of serving as a coach and that can at least determine the ones at highest risk. And then you add to that the previous question you asked and that's the role of public mental health education. And that's a good formula, because what we say at the Clay Center is we want to teach everybody parents, caregivers, young people the three W's what to look for, when to worry. In other words, this is just a phase like the terrible twos and what to do.
Speaker 3:And if, if they know those things, they can, they can have more nuanced conversations with their primary care physicians. They can come in, they can say look, I think my kid has depression. What do you mean? Well, they're not sleeping, they're not eating as much or they're eating too much. Actually, for teenagers they're sleeping too much, their concentration is down, their mood is, their behavior, they're irritable, they're kind of cranky.
Speaker 3:And then the whole level of conversation becomes far more advanced. And the more parents and caregivers can kind of come into the PCP's office, the pediatrician's office or even talk with a counselor, they're ready to rock and roll and the more information they learn and the more they learn about what to do at home. Because what we know about the care of young people is that the more, the more we synergize techniques at home, in the family, techniques in school, techniques on the playing field, techniques in their places of worship. You know, it's really kind of the model of multi systemic therapy which has been proven to work very effectively even for the most severe disorders. I conduct disorders, so you know that's all based on public mental health education.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and knowing again, like you're saying, for coaches and youth, pastors and teachers and everyone to kind of have this on their radar, to look and to know and then to have some skills of what do you do when you have a kid who's struggling and how to help them. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me, can?
Speaker 1:you say more like some. Tell us a little bit more about the Clay Center, though, and some of the work you're doing there.
Speaker 3:Well, the Clay Center was founded in 2013. And our mission is to be a trusted online educational resource that is dedicated to promoting the mental, emotional and behavioral well being of children's, teens and young adults through education we are. Our major focus is prevention, and then early intervention and de stigmatization. We don't do clinical services, we don't make referrals, we're purely educational. I mean, we can only take on so much, but one of the things that we do is we provide kind of a multimedia platform. So we have blogs Right now we have over 400 blogs, a whole wealth of topics, and we even have an Espanol page because we want to translate into multiple languages videos, podcasts, webinars, use of social media, user guides, and we interface fairly regularly with the news media.
Speaker 3:So I've kind of got to know. I've been on the weather channel seven times. Weather channel yeah, they call me Dr Doom. Well, I call myself Dr Doom because whenever there's a hurricane or a well, it started with Katrina how do you talk to your kids about Katrina? How do you talk to your kids about mass shootings? Well, that's, yeah, terrorism. And you know, younger kids don't know. You know where Columbine is, was you know or is? They see these images over and over and over again that are horrifying, like Uvaldi you know where, which was just so tragic, and and and they don't know where Uvaldi is, and they don't know that it's not next door, and they don't know that it's not going to happen in their school. And so Khadija Booth Watkins, who's my associate director at the Clay Center, we were on Within 24 hours. We were on six channels and reached 12 million people.
Speaker 3:So the nice thing, the great thing about making relationships with news media and journalists is that the reach gets so much bigger. And in terms of reach in 2022, we had a million page views. We had about 60,000 downloads of our podcast, shrinking it Down Mental Health Made Simple, which was in the top 10% globally. I don't know how it was, because we didn't pay for advertising, because we don't have a lot of funding and we have a very skeleton staff. But if you look at reach, what reach means is if you add up the number of citations you have in a year, for example, in the New York Times and Forbes and the Washington Post and Slate and BuzzFeed, and you name it the Weather Channel, it's about 3 billion per year. So in the last four years, we've had a potential reach of 8.5 billion people Now that's more people that exist on the earth.
Speaker 3:But I said to my communications director are you sure it's a B and not an M? And media folks know that what reach means is that that many people would have seen you. Reach is super important, so we've been very successful, but it also takes a village. I mean folks like you are interviewing me and people reach out. I mean I've been interviewed by numerous podcasts and we've done webinars, like for Boston Scientific and the local discovery children's discovery museum, and then we coordinate with other groups that are super important, like NAMI and like Jedd and like the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. So partnerships are also a really key part of public mental health education, because if we're all working together, we can cover a lot of ground. So what you guys are doing is fantastic.
Speaker 2:Well, I was just thinking, like you're doing the dang thing with this, what you're doing, like you're getting it out to the public.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, how do people reach that? I imagine if I just Google Clay Center, I think in fact I did.
Speaker 3:Well, you can go. Our website is mghclayscenterorg. Our YouTube channel is. If you go to YouTube, MGH Clay Center, that's where you'll get lots of videos, short videos, public service announcements and conversation starters and a whole wealth of online material. So we have a promotional video that is right up front that people can look at to learn more about the Clay Center. So there's a lot of ways to get to us. Those are the two primary ways.
Speaker 2:I wonder I mean in the spirit of this idea that we get more information out to more people, especially around our young people and their mental health I wonder what advice, thoughts, reflections you have for mental health clinicians and their role in kind of continuing getting this out there.
Speaker 3:We thought, and still know, that our primary order is parents and caregivers, but about a third of the individuals that come to the Clay Center are young people themselves we don't know how many under 18, because Google Analytics doesn't tell you that but for clinicians to use our blogs, podcasts, videos, or parents that want to know more about what is ADHD. Do stimulants fry the brain? Are they overprescribed? Why are there shortages? What are learning disabilities? How do they affect my kid? You mentioned an IEP. Hey, what is an individual educational plan? Why does my kid need one of those things? So we try to make our blogs and our podcasts and our videos accessible, narrative, short and understandable. I think they're very effective when clinicians say, hey, you can learn a little bit more about your kid if you just go to this, and then they can send them to our site.
Speaker 2:Again, as working with families and teens and kids, I tell you what that is a constant question, which is we'd really like to learn more about this. We don't want to read a whole book. We don't have time to read a whole book. Do you have something that we could, an article or something? And I think we're often all kind of hey, does anybody have something on this particular thing? And we're all looking for resources, and so, again, to know that this is out there, I think it's really, really important, because I think that's a huge need to have things that are digestible, that aren't a huge commitment in regard to time, but can get some of this information out.
Speaker 3:And I think the value of multimedia is that some parents and caregivers like to read blogs, some want to listen to a podcast when they're doing errands and they can just put on an R podcast, you know. They're about 20, 25 minutes on a certain topic. And then some, when they're just hanging out at the computer, they want to see a YouTube video, and we've got a bunch that are relevant to them and most of our videos are four minutes long. You see, I mean most attention span. Most people on, you know, on YouTube or on a webpage, last about one and a half minutes. We actually have more like two and a half to four minutes if they watch the video Multimedia.
Speaker 3:I think is really the way to go, because people have different ways of learning and they want different media. Makes sense.
Speaker 2:Well, I feel really grateful for your work and for the again the resource that it's been yes, and you've been talking to us today, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for your time. Thanks so much, I mean, really, for everything that you're doing and hopefully people make use of that.
Speaker 3:Well, this is great. I'm delighted and I think what you guys are doing is terrific as well. I mean because you're doing essentially what we're doing and that is, you know, there's so few organizations and Menengar being a really extraordinary place with a huge history but well known, big reach, well respected, and you know, the fact that you're putting out a podcast is terrific because the more institutions that do this, I mean, the more people will get good, trustworthy information. And that's the problem is is that for anybody that just goes to Google and Google say eating disorder, they might get an Anemia website that tells them how to lose weight, how to restrict, how to do bad things, and they don't know. You can't.
Speaker 2:Google anything you cannot Google. If you have any symptom of anything mental or physical health you Google it. They're like you're dying.
Speaker 1:It's always some kind of reddit discussion, bad advice, you know. But well, thank you so much for coming on. We do appreciate your time. Oh, my pleasure.
Speaker 3:My pleasure.
Speaker 1:Once again we've been listening to Dr Jean Bureson at MGH and talking about child psychiatry today, and I'm your host. I'm Bob Owen, I'm Carrie Harrell.
Speaker 2:And thanks for that again.
Speaker 1:Thanks for that again.
Speaker 2:The Mind Dive Podcast is presented by the Meninger Clinic. If you're curious about the professional experiences of mental health clinicians, make sure to subscribe wherever you listen.
Speaker 1:For more episodes like this, visit wwwmeningerclinicorg.
Speaker 2:To submit a topic for discussion, send us an email at podcastatmeningeredu.