Teen Mental Health

The world has never experienced a mental dis-ease epidemic like the meaning crisis we currently face. There are many reasons for this, materialism being the most pernicious. Like a deeply rooted weed, it infests the garden of society’s soul. We have grown accustomed to looking at everything from the outside in and trying to remedy problems that way – more meds, more activities, more devices. All have failed, and this soul-illness hits teens hard. The stats of teen mental health express a sobering reality, and we have to do something. In this post, therefore, we seek a way to build teen mental health from the inside out using Rudolf Steiner’s new thinking as a path.

The “How” of Teen Mental Health

The medicine for the meaning crisis starts in the question: “What do I want?” or “What do I love?” The fact that even one adult asks teens this and cares about the answer can be incredibly empowering to them. Then, it becomes a matter of helping them organize their life energies towards what they want and not what they don’t want. For example, if they want to improve on the guitar, wasting hours a day on their phones isn’t going to get them there. We therefore need a practical way to provide these seeking youth exercises and accountability to help them command themselves towards their goals. (It’s a tall order to ask teens to master themselves, but this is the time in life when it starts. If it doesn’t, we can start to lose them big-time.)

The “Why” of Teen Mental Health

In our times, the corporate profit machine generally cares little who it harms in its insatiable appetite for accumulation. We this see played out in the addictive formulas chain restaurants use or social media algorithms calculated to keep teens scrolling. While we modern humans still learn the hard lesson of socially responsible business, teen mental health, unfortunately, ends up in the meat grinder. Just watch the youth anywhere, any day for an hour and you will see what hopeless addicts they have become. Materialism – that is, the addiction of looking only outside of oneself for happiness – has wrought havoc on this rising generation. Just see how the hidden puppeteer preys on them, distracting them from the more sacred human goal of, “Know Thyself.”

The Victory We seek

Around the age of 8 or 9, baseball Hall of Famer Derek Jeter began proclaiming, “I am going to play shortstop for the Yankees.” His resolve never weakened, despite continuous taunting and teasing by peers. During that time, he organized all his thoughts, feelings, and actions towards his goal and achieved it with awe-inspiring glory. In his first year, Jeter and his team became world champions. Now, he was not the fastest nor strongest ball player of his time. He was, however, arguably the most inwardly organized, and that is exactly the point. Teen mental health is an inside game.

Teen Empowerment

That is why we do a weekly Teen Empowerment Class at Enkindle Academy. This class is one of the crown jewels of our curriculum, but don’t just take my word for it. Ask the students, one of whom said to an inquiring peer, “We do visioning exercises and read super inspiring biographies. I love this class. It’s my favorite!” In each class, we do exercises to strengthen our inner capacities with homework exercises to perform between classes. It’s like a workout for the soul. We make goals, commit to habits, and hold each other accountable for them. In other words, we build a cauldron of students who hold each other to living in integrity with themselves. Thus, we are doing something about teen mental health, we are remedying the meaning crisis.

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Enrollment for the Live Teen Empowerment Class is on a rolling basis. For more info visit: