Excerpt: “Heal Your Daughter”

“As one example, some time in 2018 and 2019, many of the young people in my practice suddenly started reporting gender dysphoria and declaring themselves trans. Charismatic social media stars were effectively saying: ‘If you don’t fit in, if you don’t like your body, then you’re trans. Everything will get better after you transition.'”

In February of this year, Cheryl L. Green, M.D. published Heal Your Daughter: How Lifestyle Psychiatry Can Save Her from Depression, Cutting, and Suicidal Thoughts, her 176-page effort to grapple with what is ailing young women in the United States and perhaps what can be done about it. Inspired by her experiences seeing patients, mostly adolescent girls, in Los Angeles, Dr. Green chronicles how issues from diet to social media to bullying to the growing trend of identifying as transgender take their toll on young women. In light of recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data showing that “teen girls are confronting the highest levels of sexual violence, sadness, and hopelessness they have ever reported to [Youth Risk Behavior Survey],” Dr. Green puts forward several concrete suggestions in her book for how parents can help their daughters. Below is an excerpt taken from Heal Your Daughter’s sixth chapter.

From Chapter Six: “The Art of Relaxation”

I see about 60 teens each week. Virtually all of them are under tremendous stress, stress that is beyond toxic. To name just a few examples of the most common stressors that your teen daughter might be up against:

Trouble in the family: Many families are undergoing divorce, are experiencing extreme financial stress, or both. The breakdown of the family is one of the most stressful things that teens can undergo. Although most parents try to buffer their kids from knowledge of the extent of their troubles, the kids pick up on it anyway. Events that are traumatic to the parents take a toll on everyone involved, including the children. Parental alienation—a situation in which one parent subtly or not-so-subtly conditions a child to hate the other parent—is all too common. I have rarely seen a divorce in which children are not “weaponized” to hurt one of the parents to some degree. And even in the families that seem to be the most harmonious, most parents still struggle to find enough time to spend with their kids. Many teens feel that they are raising themselves, alone. Many resent the missing parent or parents.