The Mental and Physiological Health of Girls and Young Women

In this seminar, award-winning science journalist Donna Jackson Nakazawa and Professor Wanjiku Njoroge will delve into the problems young girls face and share new evidence that uncovers how and why the mental health crisis facing girls today is a biologically rooted phenomenon that interplays with a society and culture where children seem to grow up earlier and faster. Jackson Nakazawa will speak to how the earlier onset of puberty mixes badly with the unchecked rise of social media and ongoing cultural misogyny, and how this affects girls’ health and well-being. Dr. Njoroge will address how systems of oppression, predominantly racism, affect girls across development. When this toxic biopsychosocial clash occurs during the critical neurodevelopmental window of adolescence for girls, it can alter the female stress-immune response in ways that derail healthy emotional development and harm well-being.  

However, our new understanding of the biology of modern girlhood yields good news, too. Though puberty is a particularly critical and vulnerable period, it is also a time during which the female adolescent brain is highly flexible and responsive to certain kinds of support and scaffolding. Based on the latest science, Jackson Nakazawa will share a series of neuroprotective and healing strategies for how clinicians, parents, and communities can help secure a healthy emotional inner life for girls and young women.