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Join us for 'History. Culture. Trauma.' encore podcast — Thursday 1PM PT with "Girls on the Brink" author Donna Jackson Nakazawa

 

A headline earlier this year said it simply: Social Media is Devastating Girls Mental Health.

Donna Jackson Nakazawa, an award-winning science journalist and the author of seven books exploring the intersection of neuroscience, immunology, and human emotion, is featured in this week’s episode of History  Culture. Trauma, and explains the crisis facing today’s girls as being a biologically rooted phenomenon, and more, and offers solutions to the crisis that has many parents wondering what they can do.

“The earlier onset of puberty mixes badly with the unchecked bloom of social media and cultural misogyny. When this toxic clash occurs during the critical neurodevelopmental window of adolescence, it can alter the female stress-immune response in ways that derail healthy emotional development," explains Nakazawa.

Screen Shot 2023-06-06 at 4.50.27 PMThis week's encore episode of History. Culture. Trauma. is an excerpt from a recorded interview of Nakazawa conducted by PACEs Connection team members Carey Sipp and Natalie Audage in October, 2022, as a part of  the PACEs Connection Connecting Communities One Book at a Time initiative. The initiative featured her latest book Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media. The book was published last October.

In this interview,  Nakazawa focuses on the impact of modern society on adolescent girls. "Anyone caring for girls today knows that our daughters, students, and girls next door are more anxious and more prone to depression and self-harming than ever before. The question that no one has yet been able to credibly answer is “Why?”

Screen Shot 2023-06-06 at 4.47.40 PMNakazawa was clear that while she sees much to worry about girls’ mental health today, she also has hope. She offers 15 antidotes or “strategies for raising emotionally healthy girls” in the book and spoke about a several of them during the webinar from which this interview is gleaned. (See below for resources, including a link to the longer webinar interview in which she details the strategies.)

Antidotes fall into three categories and include three on “the building blocks of good parent-child connection, and the importance of family connection,” six antidotes for “making her home a safe space,” and six antidotes to “bring in what the wider community can provide.” The longer webinar interview honed in on at least one antidote from each of the three categories, including making it a good experience when your daughter turns to you, the importance of “wonder”, and encouraging a sense of mastery.

Jackson Nakazawa has appeared on The Today Show and NPR, and is a regular speaker at universities, including the Harvard Division of Science Library Series, Rutgers University, Johns Hopkins, Learning and the Brain, and the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. She is also the creator and founder of the narrative writing-to-heal program, which uses a process called Neural Re-Narrating to help participants recognize and override their brain’s old thought patterns and internalized stories.

Listen to "History. Culture. Trauma." here online on Thursday, or access this, or prior podcasts, at the podcast service of your choice listed below.

Additional resources related to our book study of "Girls on the Brink"

  1. You can still view the recording of the Girls on the Brink October 12 webinar!
  2. Nakazawa and her team created a Book Club Kit for people interested in leading Girls on the Brink book studies.

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