Analysis: Teenage mental health - how growing brains could explain emerging disorders

Mental health problems often emerge during adolescence, but it is still not fully understood why teenagers are so vulnerable to psychiatric illnesses, says Dr Tobias Hauser (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology). Adolescence is the time when most mental health problems arise. Diagnoses of psychiatric illnesses increase across the board, with teenagers suffering not only from mood disorders such as depression, but also from the most pervasive psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The impact of such illnesses is substantial. Suicide is one of the top five most common causes of death in adolescents. If mental health researchers have long been aware of this sharp rise in psychiatric illnesses, we still struggle to understand and explain why teenagers are so vulnerable to them. One reason for this may be a lack of information on quite how the brain changes in adolescence.