Aaron Jacob Krasner, MD

Dr. Aaron Krasner will present the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry Presidential Plenary on Monday May 22, 2023, at the APA yearly meeting in San Francisco, California. The title of his talk, “Zoomers in Mind: Engaging the Youth Mental Health Crisis” will address the causes, clinical manifestations, and a proposed response to the evolving youth mental health crisis spurred by the global COVID 19 pandemic. Adolescence is tough on teens and families on a good day but Zoomers (Late 1990s - mid 2010s) and Generation Alpha (early 2010s - mid 2020s) have had it worse . With the onset of the quarantine and related increases in social isolation and family time, adolescent development shifted yet again. If adolescent psychiatric problems were on the rise pre-pandemically then added parental distress, fear of illness, frustrations with quarantining, and diminishments in family cohesion have increased risk and exacerbated a crisis in loneliness that has far reaching implications . Dr. Krasner will review the specific evidence for changes in rates of depression, anxiety, substance use, personality pathology, eating disorders, academic engagement, risky behavior, and health care utilization relating to the COVID 19 pandemic. With an eye toward teen suicide prevention, he will address the impact of loneliness and additional stressful life events on known risk factors for suicide that include male gender, psychopathology, rigid personality traits, and difficulties with problem solving and coping skills. Dr. Krasner will address the intriguing finding that adolescents who were diagnosed and treated for psychiatric conditions prior to the onset of the pandemic seemed to have fared better than supposedly healthy controls. He will also discuss adolescent psychiatric treatments and the mental health system intended to safeguard teens with a focus on the proliferation of telehealth in adolescent psychiatry. Loneliness, fragmentation, and disengagement are not new for the American family, but they are relevant. Converging lines of evidence from sociology, psychology, and the law point to the significance of these trends and underscore the need for a systematic response from the health- care field. Dr. Krasner will offer a model for psychiatric treatment and advocacy that focuses on engagement - a transdiagnostic concept that features mindfulness (self- engagement), clinical engagement (patient engagement), interdisciplinary collaboration (collegial engagement), and public policy engagement (societal engagement) as meaningful responses to the loneliness that lies at the heart of the current crisis for American families and teens. By Krasner’s talk will familiarize adult psychiatrists with these themes and hopefully empower them to feel good about working with patients, families, and colleagues in a discussion about how engagement can lead to a greater sense of safety and security during unstable times.