134: The Emotional Lives of Teenagers – Part 1: Interview with Lisa Damour, PhD

Episode 134: Today's episode is the first of a two-part series with Lisa Damour about her 2023 book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents. In today’s episode we talk about the difference between adolescent distress and adolescent mental illness, how the COVID-19 pandemic made it more difficult for parents to distinguish between normative adolescent distress or pandemic-related mental health concerns. She talks about the most destructive myth that is out there about adolescent mental health and what we as parents, professional and a society can do about that. Along the way Lisa shared some practical tips about to manage a teenage meltdown, a story about swimming pools, and she encourages us to think critically about the research that is being done on adolescent mental health and how the news media is portraying adolescent distress. You can read a transcript of today's interview at You can connect with other social workers at the Social Work Podcast Facebook page at or follow the Twitter feed at

You can listen to 134: The Emotional Lives of Teenagers – Part 1: Interview with Lisa Damour, PhD online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

134: The Emotional Lives of Teenagers – Part 1: Interview with Lisa Damour, PhD is an episode from The Social Work Podcast by Jonathan B. Singer, Ph.D., LCSW.

This episode is 31:38 long.

This episode was published on Feb 21, 2023.

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