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BCS, 34 sycamore Road, Little Silver, NJ (2026)

08/17/2026

A landmark study published today in JAMA Pediatrics — one of the world's most authoritative medical journals — contains a finding that every parent of a teenager needs to see.

1 in 5 American adolescents aged 12 to 21 are now turning to AI chatbots when they feel stressed, angry or upset. That is nearly 42 million young Americans — up from 1 in 8 just two years ago. And almost two thirds of them have never told a single adult they are doing it.

It is not hard to understand why. Teenagers are experiencing record levels of anxiety and depression. The mental health system is expensive and stigmatised. Waiting lists are long. And the phone is available instantly — infinitely patient, non-judgmental, never going to tell their parents or their school.

But here is what today's research — alongside the Wall Street Journal's major three-part series on AI therapy launched today — is making urgent.

AI chatbots cannot handle a mental health crisis. Researcher Tijana Djordjevic, who has studied how AI systems respond to users with self-harm, anxiety and eating disorders, is direct — "The models really don't do a good job of recognising situations that would warrant human intervention." There are documented cases involving young people's deaths where a teenager discussed suicidal thoughts with a chatbot and received a response that failed to redirect them to human help.

And there is a deeper risk. Teenagers are not just using chatbots to look up information. They are forming extended, emotionally intimate conversations — sharing fears, disclosing experiences, processing feelings — in relationships that feel real but are not. The temporary relief is real. But there is no one on the other side. No human being who will remember tomorrow what your teenager shared tonight. No one who will notice, three sessions from now, that something has shifted.

The risk is that the emotional satisfaction of AI conversation reduces the felt urgency of seeking real human connection — the very connection the research tells us is the most powerful ingredient in adolescent mental health.

Your teenager may already be having their most honest emotional conversations with an AI. That gap — between what they will share with an algorithm and what they feel safe sharing with a person — is not a technology problem. It is a relational one. And it is exactly what therapy is for.

We just published a brand new blog post about today's JAMA Pediatrics study — what it found and what it means for your family.

Read it now 👉 leafpsych.com/blog

If you or your child are in crisis, call or text 988.

LEAF by Dr. Dana Spada Psychotherapy Boutique private therapy for children, teens, adults, couples and families across Monmouth County, NJ. In-person sessions in Colts Neck, Little Silver, Hazlet & Sea Girt — plus virtual sessions available.

Call: 732-947-4777 [email protected] 🗓️ Book a session

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988.

08/14/2026

Three significant new studies published this week — in Child Abuse & Neglect and Frontiers in Psychology — have added something important and genuinely hopeful to the research on adverse childhood experiences.

We know that difficult childhood experiences leave marks. On the nervous system, on the developing brain, on the patterns of thought, emotion and relationship that we carry into adulthood. The science on this is robust and well established.

But this week's studies add something the ACEs literature has not always emphasised loudly enough.

Positive childhood experiences can erase those marks. Not reduce them. Not partially offset them. In a study of 700 adolescents, at high levels of positive childhood experience — the link between childhood adversity and poor mental health disappeared entirely.

A second study — tracking 7,158 adolescents — found that the most powerful pathway between childhood adversity and depression and anxiety was not trauma symptoms or perceived stress. It was self-hate. The internal verdict about what the difficult things that happened meant about who you are. That pathway accounted for 39.15% of the total association between ACEs and depression and anxiety.

And a third study — following 2,249 parent-adolescent pairs — found that the transmission of adversity across generations runs through parenting style. Specifically through rejection and warmth. Parents who experienced more ACEs reported higher parenting stress and their children reported more parental rejection. But parental warmth was linked to lower rates of anxiety and depression in children — independent of the parent's own history.

Which means this. You are not condemned to repeat what was done to you. A parent who carries their own difficult history but who brings genuine warmth to their parenting can interrupt the transmission of that adversity to the next generation. The story can change. It does not have to pass down.

And the self-hate that developed in response to difficult experiences — the inner critic, the pervasive sense of being fundamentally flawed — is not who you are. It is a pathway that formed in response to experience. And it can be met, understood and transformed by a different kind of experience. One built on compassion, attunement and genuine care.

This is exactly what therapy is for.

We just published a brand new blog post about childhood adversity and the genuinely hopeful new research — published this week.

Read it now 👉 leafpsych.com/blog

LEAF by Dr. Dana Spada Psychotherapy Boutique private therapy for adults, teens, couples and families across Monmouth County, NJ. In-person sessions in Colts Neck, Little Silver, Hazlet & Sea Girt — plus virtual sessions available.

Call: 732-947-4777 [email protected] 🗓️ Book a session

08/06/2026

UC Davis Health published a major new study this week in Psychological Medicine — one of the world's leading psychiatric journals — and the finding is both surprising and immediately actionable for every parent of a teenager.

When it comes to helping young people aged 10 to 13 succeed at school, maintain healthy friendships and navigate daily life — especially when they are already struggling with anxiety or depression — sleep matters more than screen time, exercise or diet. More than all of them.

Here is what the data showed. Sleep quality was the strongest lifestyle factor linking mental health symptoms to lower academic grades — accounting for 36.3% of the association between anxiety and poor grades, and 18.5% of the association between depression and poor grades. Screen time was the second strongest factor at roughly 5 to 6%. Exercise and diet had smaller effects still.

And crucially — sleep was also the strongest factor linking mental health symptoms to social problems. Difficulty maintaining friendships. Difficulty navigating peer relationships. A teenager who is chronically under-slept is not just a teenager who struggles to concentrate in class. They are a teenager whose emotional regulation, social cognition and capacity to sustain friendships is significantly diminished.

"Sleep is something parents and families can address," said Dr. Tara Niendam, the study's senior author and professor of psychiatry at UC Davis. "While it won't solve every mental health challenge, healthy sleep routines are a practical way to support a child's emotional well-being and day-to-day functioning."

With school weeks away here is what the research supports right now. Start shifting sleep schedules gradually — 15 to 20 minutes earlier every two to three days. Create a genuine wind-down window before bed. Get phones out of the bedroom entirely. And protect sleep duration above everything else — the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 8 to 10 hours for teenagers.

And if the sleep problems run deeper — if they are driven by anxiety, rumination or a nervous system that simply cannot let go at night — that is worth taking seriously before the school year begins.

We just published a brand new blog post about teen sleep and mental health — backed by this week's UC Davis study in Psychological Medicine.

Read it now 👉 leafpsych.com/blog

LEAF by Dr. Dana Spada Psychotherapy Boutique private therapy for children, teens, adults, couples and families across Monmouth County, NJ. In-person sessions in Colts Neck, Little Silver, Hazlet & Sea Girt — plus virtual sessions available.

Call: 732-947-4777 [email protected] 🗓️ Book a session

08/05/2026

Psychiatric Times published a major clinical piece today by Dr. Prerna Gait — a psychiatry resident at St. Catherine of Siena Hospital in Smithtown, New York — asking one of the most quietly important questions in mental health.

We know exercise helps with depression and anxiety. The BMJ published a landmark 2024 meta-analysis confirming it. JAMA Psychiatry confirmed it. The recommendation appears in every clinical guideline. And yet — for so many people living with depression and anxiety — it simply does not happen. Or it starts and stops. Or it becomes yet another thing they are failing at. And then they feel worse about themselves for not doing it.

Dr. Gait's piece asks why. And her answer deserves to be heard.

Depression makes exercise harder in exactly the ways that would make it most helpful. Low motivation. Fatigue. Anhedonia — the loss of pleasure in things that once felt rewarding, including movement. The voice that says it won't make a difference anyway. These are not personality failures. They are the symptoms of depression actively working against the treatment.

For people with anxiety the problem is different but equally real. The physical sensations of exercise — elevated heart rate, faster breathing, a flush of physical arousal — overlap significantly with the sensations of a panic attack. For a nervous system that is already hypervigilant, the body's response to exercise can feel threatening. This is not irrationality. It is threat misappraisal. And it is not a willpower problem.

The other part of the problem? The way we prescribe exercise. Telling someone to "just get moving" — without structure, specificity or follow-up — is like telling someone with high blood pressure to "just eat better." The research shows that a specific, individualised, feasibility-focused approach — starting genuinely small, choosing movement you can actually tolerate, prioritising regularity over intensity — produces dramatically better outcomes than a general recommendation ever will.

And here is what the research also confirms. Exercise is not superior to therapy or medication for depression and anxiety. It adds meaningful benefit alongside proper treatment. The two work best together.

You are not failing at exercise. You are navigating a condition that makes it genuinely hard. And the answer is not to push harder — it is to get the right support.

We just published a brand new blog post about exercise, depression and anxiety — backed by today's Psychiatric Times clinical piece and landmark BMJ and JAMA Psychiatry research.

Read it now 👉 leafpsych.com/blog

LEAF by Dr. Dana Spada Psychotherapy Boutique private therapy for adults, teens, couples and families across Monmouth County, NJ. In-person sessions in Colts Neck, Little Silver, Hazlet & Sea Girt — plus virtual sessions available.

Call: 732-947-4777 [email protected] 🗓️ Book a session

08/04/2026

Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman — cognitive scientist and one of the most respected voices in the psychology of human potential — published his August 2026 Research Roundup this week. And one finding in it stopped us completely.

Overall psychological functioning peaks at around 55 to 60 years old. Not your twenties. Not your thirties. Your mid-to-late fifties.

A study published in the journal Intelligence combined data across nine human capacities — cognitive tests, the Big Five personality traits, emotional intelligence, moral reasoning, financial literacy and resistance to common thinking traps — and asked when human functioning actually peaks.

Yes — processing speed and raw fluid reasoning fade after early adulthood. But everything else tells a completely different story. Crystallised knowledge — accumulated wisdom and depth of understanding — keeps growing well into later life. Emotional intelligence peaks in the mid-40s. Financial literacy peaks in the late 60s. Moral reasoning deepens into later life with no clear ceiling. Blend it all together and the high point of overall psychological functioning falls at 55 to 60.

This matters because the dominant cultural narrative is completely wrong. Youth is not the peak of human potential. The research now tells us that the person in their mid-to-late fifties — navigating the demands of midlife with everything they have lived and learned — is operating closer to the peak of what human psychological functioning can be than they have ever been before.

The same research roundup also includes a second finding worth knowing. A single more-mindful day predicted better mental health for up to four days afterward. Accepting experience without judgment settled rumination. Observing thoughts without being swept away generated self-compassion and flashes of awe and joy. The ripple goes further than you think.

Here is what this means for the therapy room. The person in midlife doing deep psychological work — examining the patterns of a lifetime with clarity and compassion — has more emotional intelligence, more wisdom and more capacity for genuine growth than younger versions of themselves ever had. This is the period when the full architecture of who you are comes into its most complete expression.

You are not declining. You are arriving. And the best work of your life may still be ahead of you.

We just published a brand new blog post about the psychology of midlife — backed by this week's research roundup from Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman.

Read it now 👉 leafpsych.com/blog

LEAF by Dr. Dana Spada Psychotherapy Boutique private therapy for adults, teens, couples and families across Monmouth County, NJ. In-person sessions in Colts Neck, Little Silver, Hazlet & Sea Girt — plus virtual sessions available.

Call: 732-947-4777 [email protected] 🗓️ Book a session

08/03/2026

The Washington Post published a major piece this week featuring Dr. Amir Levine — associate professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and author of Attached, the 3-million-copy bestseller that introduced millions of people to the language of anxious, avoidant and secure attachment.

And what he says is not what most of the internet would have you believe.

Attachment styles are not personality types. They are not fixed. They are not your destiny. They are patterns that develop in response to experience — and that can change with new experiences.

Here are the five biggest misconceptions Dr. Levine is correcting.

First — your attachment style is not one thing across all relationships. You may feel secure with your partner and anxious with a close friend. Attachment plays out differently depending on who you are with and what that relationship has taught your nervous system to expect.

Second — your parents are not entirely to blame. A landmark study following 705 people across three decades found that early friendships leave their own lasting marks on attachment patterns — separate from parental relationships. The story is more complex, and more hopeful, than the simple parental origin story.

Third — it only takes one secure person to begin shifting a relationship. One person's consistent responsiveness, reliability and emotional availability can begin to foster a more secure dynamic for both partners over time.

Fourth — it is the small moments that matter most. The brain is perpetually scanning for evidence of belonging or exclusion. The text that doesn't get answered. The moment of dismissal in a conversation. Each becomes a data point in the brain's calculation about whether we are safe and connected. Healing happens in the small moments too.

And fifth — you can change your attachment style. The brain remains plastic throughout adulthood. Repeated experiences of safety and attunement can literally reshape the neural circuits that govern fear, trust and emotional regulation. A therapy relationship can move someone from insecure to earned secure attachment.

You are not your attachment style. You are a person who learned to relate in the ways that kept you safe. And you can learn something different.

We just published a brand new blog post about attachment theory — what the science actually says, what TikTok gets wrong, and what therapy can do to help.

Read it now 👉 leafpsych.com/blog

LEAF by Dr. Dana Spada Psychotherapy Boutique private therapy for adults, teens, couples and families across Monmouth County, NJ. In-person sessions in Colts Neck, Little Silver, Hazlet & Sea Girt — plus virtual sessions available.

Call: 732-947-4777 [email protected] 🗓️ Book a session

07/30/2026

School is a few weeks away. The backpacks are being ordered. The supply lists are being checked off.

And for a lot of children and teenagers across Monmouth County — underneath the surface of summer — something else is quietly building.

Anxiety about going back.

Dr. Leslie K. Taylor — child psychologist and director of the Clinical Psychology PhD program at UTHealth Houston — published a major back-to-school mental health guide this week. And what she says deserves to be in every parent's hands before the first day of school arrives.

Here is one of the most immediately usable pieces of advice in it. Most parents, at the end of a school day, ask "How was your day?" — and most children answer "Fine." Dr. Taylor suggests replacing that with something that actually opens a door. What was the best thing that happened today? What was the worst thing? What made you smile? What surprised you? These are not trick questions. They are invitations. And when your child does open up — ask first whether they want you to listen or whether they want help solving something. Often what a child needs most is simply to be heard.

On sleep — start shifting schedules now. At least two weeks before the first day. Teenagers shift dramatically in summer and sleep deprivation is one of the most consistent drivers of anxiety, depression and poor academic performance. A well-rested child going into the first week of school is neurologically and emotionally better equipped to handle everything the new year brings.

On overscheduling — Dr. Taylor is direct. A packed schedule does not mean a successful one. Overscheduling actively harms children's mental health — creating stress and burnout in children who have neither the vocabulary nor the permission to say they are exhausted. Ask not whether your child can manage all of these activities — but how managing all of them will actually affect them and your family.

And if you notice significant changes in behaviour or mood that persist for two weeks or longer — withdrawal, sleep changes, persistent irritability, anxiety that doesn't resolve — that is a signal worth taking seriously. The earlier it is responded to, the more straightforward the support tends to be.

The school year is coming. Your child doesn't have to face it alone. And neither do you.

We just published a brand new blog post about back-to-school mental health — backed by this week's UTHealth Houston expert guide.

Read it now 👉 leafpsych.com/blog

LEAF by Dr. Dana Spada Psychotherapy Boutique private therapy for children, teens, adults, couples and families across Monmouth County, NJ. In-person sessions in Colts Neck, Little Silver, Hazlet & Sea Girt — plus virtual sessions available.

Call: 732-947-4777 [email protected] 🗓️ Book a session

07/29/2026

A landmark global study published today in Menopause: The Journal of the Menopause Society — conducted by Mayo Clinic and Flo Health across 7,975 women in 20 countries — has just confirmed something that millions of women have been living without anyone taking seriously enough.

Perimenopausal women experience psychological symptoms 1.5 times more severely than premenopausal women. Across every symptom measured. Exhaustion. Irritability. Anxiety. Depressive mood. Every single one significantly higher. After controlling for age, income, education, ethnicity, pre-existing mental health conditions, BMI and lifestyle factors.

And the symptom showing the greatest difference? Not anxiety. Not depression. Exhaustion. A bone-deep, relentless depletion that sleep doesn't fix, that rest doesn't touch, that feels nothing like ordinary tiredness — and everything like the ground giving way beneath you.

For many women perimenopause also brings its first significant encounter with anxiety — or a dramatic worsening of anxiety that was previously manageable. Because oestrogen plays a direct role in regulating serotonin, dopamine and GABA — the neurotransmitters most central to mood stability and calm. As oestrogen fluctuates, so does the neurochemical environment those systems depend on. The result can be a sudden, destabilising anxiety that feels completely disconnected from anything happening in your life.

And then there is the irritability. Not ordinary irritability — but a sudden, white-hot, completely disproportionate response that surprises you as much as the people around you. That feels foreign to your own sense of who you are. You are not losing yourself. Your brain's emotional regulation system is being disrupted by hormonal fluctuations that directly affect the prefrontal cortex. The irritability is neurological. It is real. And it deserves compassion.

Today's study also found that the United States reports among the highest psychological symptom burden of all 20 countries studied. Higher-income, higher-pressure, more individualistic societies — where women carry enormous competing demands and where the cultural expectation of female stoicism runs deep — appear to be places where the psychological burden of perimenopause is particularly heavy.

This is not a coincidence. It is a context. And it deserves real support.

We just published a brand new blog post about perimenopause and mental health — what today's landmark Mayo Clinic study found and what therapy can do to help.

Read it now 👉 leafpsych.com/blog

LEAF by Dr. Dana Spada Psychotherapy Boutique private therapy for adults, teens, couples and families across Monmouth County, NJ. In-person sessions in Colts Neck, Little Silver, Hazlet & Sea Girt — plus virtual sessions available.

Call: 732-947-4777 [email protected] 🗓️ Book a session

07/28/2026

If you or someone you know needs help, call or text 988, the US Su***de and Crisis Lifeline.

A report published today — drawing on provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — contains findings that every parent, teacher, coach and caregiver needs to know.

Pr***en su***de deaths in the United States reached 194 in 2025 — the highest number recorded since at least 2001, and more than four times higher than in 2008. Since 2008, the rate of pr***en su***de has increased by an average of 8.2% annually.

These are children aged 8 to 12.

We are sharing this not to frighten you. We are sharing it because the research is clear — awareness, conversation and early intervention save lives. And silence, however well-intentioned, does not.

The experts point to a convergence of factors. The COVID years — children who are 10 to 12 today spent their kindergarten and early elementary years at home, isolated from peers during the exact window when foundations of social connection are built. Social media and screen time. Chronic sleep deprivation. Academic pressure. The loss of unstructured play. A generation of children carrying more than any previous generation has been asked to carry at this age.

The warning signs in pr***ens often look different from what parents expect. Withdrawal from activities. Changes in sleep and appetite. Fatigue. Irritability. Physical complaints — headaches, stomach aches — that are really emotional distress presenting in the body. Statements of hopelessness. Any mention of self-harm.

And the most important thing the research tells us — talking about su***de does not put the idea in a child's head. It helps. An awkward, imperfect conversation that opens the door is infinitely more protective than silence.

Most parents are surprised by a mental health crisis in their child. Not because they weren't paying attention. But because children are extraordinarily skilled at keeping their pain private. Proactive, warm, explicit conversation — not waiting for your child to come to you — is one of the most protective things you can do.

If you are worried about your child — trust that instinct. An early conversation is always worth having. And an early appointment is always worth making.

We just published a new blog post about the pr***en mental health crisis — what today's CDC data shows, what the warning signs look like and what parents can do.

Read it now 👉 leafpsych.com/blog

LEAF by Dr. Dana Spada Psychotherapy Boutique private therapy for children, teens, adults, couples and families across Monmouth County, NJ. In-person sessions in Colts Neck, Little Silver, Hazlet & Sea Girt — plus virtual sessions available.

Call: 732-947-4777 [email protected] 🗓️ Book a session

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988.

07/27/2026

The University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital published a major national poll today — and every parent of a teenager or young adult needs to read it.

1 in 6 young adults aged 18 to 25 cannot independently handle a single basic healthcare task — from scheduling an appointment to understanding their insurance to knowing when they actually need to see someone.

And the top health concerns parents have for their young adults? Excessive screen time. Stress. Insufficient sleep. Unhealthy eating habits. A lack of physical activity.

In other words — the things most likely to drive a mental health crisis in a young person's first years of independence.

Here is the transition that today's poll puts into sharp focus. At 18, the law says your child is an adult. Healthcare decisions become theirs. Medical records become confidential. The responsibility has transferred — legally, formally, completely. But emotional and psychological readiness doesn't work on a legal timeline.

Turning 18 doesn't mean a young person has the internal resources, the self-awareness or the practical skills to recognise when they are struggling — let alone to reach out, make an appointment and ask for help. Not because they are irresponsible or immature. But because managing your own mental health is a genuinely complex skill that has to be built, practised and modelled over time. Most of the time, it isn't.

The transition from adolescence to adulthood is one of the most psychologically demanding passages in human development. The financial pressure is unprecedented. The social pressure is relentless. The identity questions — who am I, what do I want, what kind of person am I becoming — feel enormous and urgent. And underneath all of it, for many young adults, is anxiety. A pervasive, often unrecognised, frequently untreated anxiety that nobody explicitly taught them how to manage.

Today's poll also found that more than half of parents rated themselves highly for preparing their child to manage their own health. And yet 1 in 6 of their young adults couldn't independently manage a single healthcare task. That gap is not about parenting failure. It is about a mismatch between the practical skills that get passed on and the emotional and psychological skills that are much harder to name and teach.

How to recognise when you are not okay. How to ask for help without shame. How to manage anxiety without numbing it. How to sit with uncertainty without spiralling. These are not things covered in a conversation before move-in day at college. They are the work of a longer, deeper developmental process.

The law says they're adults. But growing into adulthood — really growing into it — takes time, support and the right kind of help.

We just published a brand new blog post about young adult mental health and the transition to independence — backed by today's University of Michigan national poll.

Read it now 👉 leafpsych.com/blog

LEAF by Dr. Dana Spada Psychotherapy Boutique private therapy for adults, teens, couples and families across Monmouth County, NJ. In-person sessions in Colts Neck, Little Silver, Hazlet & Sea Girt — plus virtual sessions available — perfect for college students.

Call: 732-947-4777 [email protected] 🗓️ Book a session

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