The Washington Post - USA (2022-04-01)

A6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, APRIL 1 , 2022

BY MORIAH BALINGIT

The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention is warning of an
accelerating mental health crisis
among adolescents, with more
than 4 in 10 teens reporting that
they feel “persistently sad or hope-
less,” and 1 in 5 saying they have
contemplated suicide, according
to the results of a survey pub-
lished Thursday.
“These data echo a cry for help,”
said Debra Houry, a deputy direc-
tor at the CDC. “The covid-19 pan-
demic has created traumatic
stressors that have the potential
to further erode students’ mental
well-being.”
The findings draw on a survey
of a nationally representative
sample of 7,700 teens conducted
in the first six months of 2021,
when they were in the midst of
their first full pandemic school
year. They were questioned on a
range of topics, including their
mental health, alcohol and drug
use, and whether they had en-
countered violence at home or at
school. They were also asked
about whether they had encoun-

tered racism. Although young people were spared the brunt of the virus — falling ill and dying at much lower rates than older people — they might still pay a steep price for the pandemic, having come of age while weathering isolation, un- certainty, economic turmoil and, for many, grief. In a news conference, Kathleen A. Ethier, head of the CDC’s divi- sion of adolescent and school health, said the survey results un- derscored the vulnerability of cer- tain students, including LGBTQ youths and students who reported being treated unfairly due to their race. And female students are far worse off than their male peers. “All students were impacted by the pandemic, but not all students were impacted equally,” Ethier said. It’s not the first time officials have warned of a mental health crisis among teens. In October, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health, saying that its members were “caring for young people with soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidality that will have lasting impacts on them, their families, and their communities.” In December, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued an advi- sory on protecting youth mental

health. “The pandemic era’s unfathom- able number of deaths, pervasive sense of fear, economic instability, and forced physical distancing from loved ones, friends, and communities have exacerbated the unprecedented stresses young people already faced,” Murthy wrote. “It would be a tragedy if we beat back one public health crisis only to allow another to grow in its place.” The CDC survey paints a por- trait of a generation reeling from the pandemic, grappling with food insecurity, academic strug- gles, poor health and abuse at home. Nearly 30 percent of the teens surveyed said a parent or other adult in their home lost work during the pandemic, and a quarter struggled with hunger. Two-thirds said they had difficulty with schoolwork. But the survey also offers hope, finding that teens who feel connected at school report much lower rates of poor health. The finding calls attention to the critical role schools can play in a student’s mental health. Ethier said the findings add to a body of research that shows that feeling connected at school can be “a protective factor” for students. Schools can deliberately foster connectedness in a number of ways, including instructing teach- ers on how to better manage class-

rooms, facilitating clubs for students and ensuring that LGBTQ students feel welcome. Such steps can help all students — and not just the most vulnerable — do better, she said. “When you make schools less toxic for the most vulnerable students, all students benefit — and the converse is also true,” Ethier said. Katelyn Chi, a 17-year-old ju- nior at Rowland High School in Rowland Heights, Calif., said her school’s Peer Counseling Club was key to helping her get through last school year, which was entirely virtual. At the beginning of each online club meeting, she and other members filled out a Google form that simply asked them how they were doing. The forms were viewed by the club’s president, who checked in with her whenev- er she indicated she felt down. “It really helped,” Chi said. “I received support and validation.” Concerns about adolescent mental health were rising before the pandemic: Teens had been reporting poor mental health at higher rates. Between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of teens who reported having “persistent feel- ings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 37 percent. In 2021, the figure rose to 44 percent. The survey results also under- score the particular vulnerability

of LGBTQ students, who reported higher rates of suicide attempts and poor mental health. Nearly half of gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had contemplated suicide during the pandemic, compared with 14 percent of their heterosexual peers. Girls, too, reported faring worse than boys. They were twice as likely to report poor mental health. More than 1 in 4 girls reported that they had seriously contemplated attempting suicide during the pandemic, twice the rate of boys. They also reported higher rates of drinking and to- bacco use than boys. And for the first time, the CDC asked teens whether they believed that they had ever been treated unfairly or badly at school due to their race or ethnicity. Asian American students reported the highest levels of racist encoun- ters, with 64 percent answering affirmatively, followed by Black students and multiracial students, about 55 percent of whom reported racism. Students who said they had encountered racism at school reported higher rates of poor mental health and were more likely to report having a physical, mental or emotional problem that made it difficult for them to concentrate. The study also shed light on household stresses. One in 10 teens reported being physically

abused at home, and more than half reported emotional abuse, including being insulted, put down or sworn at. The survey also revealed that students who felt connected at school fared far better than those who did not. Teens who said they felt “close to people at school” were far less likely to report having attempted or thought about attempting suicide, and they were far less likely to report poor mental health than those who did not feel connected at school. The same held true for teens who felt connected virtually to friends, family members and clubs. “Comprehensive strategies that improve connections with others at home, in the community, and at school might foster improved mental health among youths during and after the pandemic,” the report concluded. Chi said she wishes policymak- ers could take adolescent mental health more seriously. She some- times feels like people her age are dismissed because of their age. “I’d like to ask them to provide us with a lot of more resources and a lot more empathy on what we’re going through,” Chi said, adding that her school delayed the open- ing of a much-needed student wellness center this year. “With things so hard right now, it’s hard to see the future as something better.”

CDC warns of p lunging mental health in teens, with 4 in 10 feeling ‘hopeless’

Study cites pandemic stressors including school, parental job loss

BY MIKE DEBONIS

The last time a Democratic
president sent Supreme Court
nominees to the Senate, Sen. Lisa
Murkowski was a member of the
Senate Republican leadership
bracing for a tough Alaska pri-
mary against a more conservative
GOP challenger.
She was accordingly tough on
President Barack Obama’s picks:
Sonia Sotomayor, she said in
2009, had given “brief and super-
ficial treatment... to important
constitutional questions,” and a
year later, she said Elena Kagan
would be “one of the least experi-
enced Supreme Court justices in
our nation’s history.” She voted
against both nominees.
More than a decade later, Mur-
kowski has undergone a political
transformation — thanks in part
to a political near-death experi-
ence, where she lost that 2010
primary only to resurrect herself
in a subsequent write-in cam-
paign with the help of centrist
voters. She is now among a hand-
ful of Republicans who are seri-
ously entertaining a vote for Presi-
dent Biden’s pending Supreme
Court nominee, Judge Ketanji
Brown Jackson of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Colum-
bia Circuit.
Her vote is being closely
watched not only in D.C., where
Democrats are eager to put a bi-
partisan stamp on Jackson’s likely
confirmation, but also back home
in Alaska, where Murkowski is
standing for reelection this year
under a newfangled election proc-
ess in which traditional party pri-
maries have been replaced with
an all-comers runoff system that
lets voters rank their preferred
choices in the four-candidate gen-
eral election.
Beyond the immediate stakes
for Jackson’s confirmation, Mur-
kowski’s vote could be an indica-
tor of how much senators of either
major party might feel empow-
ered to buck their party’s base and
tack to the center under similar
kinds of election reforms.
“It is meant to incentivize elect-
ed leaders to look beyond what
the party platform or the base of
your party wants to really be able
to have that freedom to say: I
know the party says vote this way,
but I’m looking at it globally, and
for the state of Alaska, I’m choos-
ing to vote this way,” said Jason
Grenn, a former state legislator
who led the campaign to imple-
ment the new system.
Grenn and others readily ac-
knowledge that, even before a
2020 ballot initiative mandated
the new system, Murkowski al-
ready had a well-earned reputa-
tion as a centrist in an increasing-
ly polarized Senate. Now, howev-
er, she is operating in a political
environment that is calibrated to
reward bipartisanship instead of
punishing it.
Although she backed the vast
majority of President Donald
Trump’s policy initiatives and
nominees, she was among a small
number of congressional Republi-
cans who frustrated and ultimate-

ly foiled the GOP’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Under Biden, she has voted to confirm all of his Cabinet nominees, save for Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, as well as more than 50 of his judicial nominees — a record of cross-aisle comity matched only by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). With Jackson’s nomination, Murkowski immediately found herself on a shortlist of potential GOP backers, thanks to her broad- er record, as well as her vote as one of only three Republican senators who supported Jackson’s confirmation as a circuit judge last year — joining Collins and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). Now all eyes are firmly on Mur- kowski. Collins on Wednesday announced she would back Jackson, saying the judge possessed “the experience, qualifications and in- tegrity” necessary to serve. Graham on Thursday announced that he would reverse himself and oppose Jackson, citing her “lack of a steady judicial philosophy and a tendency to achieve outcomes in spite of what the law requires or common sense would dictate.” Murkowski, who met last month with Jackson, has kept her deliberations close to the vest. She largely declined to share her im- pressions of the confirmation hearings with reporters, citing the recent sudden death of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), a congressional legend and longtime family friend. In a brief interview Tuesday, she insisted her upcoming election had no bearing on the decision: “This is a lifetime appoint- ment to the highest court in the land, so this is kind of important for the country,” she said.

Still, political ramifications will be hard to avoid for Murkowski, who is the only senator facing election this year whose vote is considered to be up for grabs. Her main competition comes not from a Democrat — the party’s only candidate withdrew from the race last week — but from a more conservative Republican, former state administrator Kelly Tshiba- ka, who has Trump’s backing.

Tshibaka has made Murkow- ski’s bipartisan record — and even her deliberative approach — a line of attack, and she has directed particular scrutiny on her votes for Democratic nominees. In in- terviews, campaign op-eds and stump speeches, Tshibaka has criticized Murkowski’s decision to support Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — who made history as the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, but is seen as hostile to the state’s oil and mining industries — as well as her 2012 vote for a federal district judge, who was confirmed 87 to 8

but went on to block two key projects in the state. “We all sit and watch.... How’s Lisa Murkowski going to vote on this justice? How’s she going to vote on Deb Haaland? How’s she going to vote on whatever?” Tshi- baka said on the “War Room” podcast Monday. “We don’t have a wishy-washy electorate in Alaska, and we know that, and we’re ready for a change.” In a statement to The Washing- ton Post, Tshibaka said Murkow- ski is “always torn between doing what’s right for Alaska or catering to her Washington, D.C., elitist friends. And too much of the time, she comes down on the side of her elitist friends.” The statement said Murkowski “also fights against solid, constitutionalist judges like Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.” Murkowski opposed Ka- vanaugh but voted to confirm Barrett. “When I’m a senator for Alaska, there will be no guessing games because Alaskans will always know where I stand: I will be with them, and not with the leftist nominees and the D.C. insiders,” Tshibaka said. Alaska has voted for every Re- publican presidential candidate since 1968, but the state’s brand of conservatism tends to be a prag- matic one, and Murkowski has taken pains to forge a political identity rooted in putting her Alaskan interests above national political fights. That reputation was burnished further last year when she played a central role in negotiating a bipartisan infra- structure bill that stands to deliv- er billions of new federal dollars to the state. She has other considerable re-

sources to draw on, including a family name that goes back in statewide politics more than 50 years and an outsize campaign account. The most recent campaign finance reports, filed on Dec. 31, showed Murkowski with $4.2 million in her coffers, while Tshibaka had $634,000. Murkowski’s critics often point out that she has never vaulted 50 percent in a general election, win- ning three elections instead with pluralities, but the new system — which will permit voters to rank second-, third- and fourth-choice candidates who are then eliminat- ed in an instant-runoff system — could cater to her broad appeal across the political spectrum. Matt Buxton, editor of the Mid- night Sun, a center-left Alaska politics website, said Murkowski has “a pretty clear path to win- ning” under the new system. “I think that it really plays well to the coalition that she has — of moderate, pro-business Republi- cans, with Alaska Natives and a decent amount of labor pretty friendly with her, too,” he said. “They’re all kind of the things you need to be able to win here, and she’s got them.” Compared with the 2017 health-care battle and the 2018 fight over Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the political temperature in Alaska around Jackson’s confirmation appears to be relatively muted. Both Murkowski and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said this week that they had not been over- whelmed with phone calls or cor- respondence about Jackson. Key interest groups in the state have also stayed on the sideline. Murkowski has been particularly attuned to Alaska Native leaders, who played a key role in her 2010

write-in victory and whom she frequently cited in explaining her opposition to the 2017 Republican health-care effort and Ka- vanaugh’s nomination, as well as her support for Haaland. This time around, several Na- tive community leaders and asso- ciations in the state have sent letters backing Jackson, as have the National Congress of Ameri- can Indians and the Native Ameri- can Rights Fund. But the state’s most influential umbrella group, the Alaska Federation of Natives, has not yet taken a position on Jackson’s nomination after taking a rare stand against Kavanaugh. Another key factor is that Mur- kowski appears unlikely to have a strong Democratic challenger. The only declared Democrat in the race, state Sen. Elvi Gray-Jack- son, announced Friday that she was ending her campaign, and while it is possible that another Democrat could run ahead of the June 1 filing deadline, that candidate is unlikely to attract signifi- cant support from national party organs. Asked about the race Wednes- day, the chairman of the Demo- cratic Senatorial Campaign Com- mittee, Sen. Gary Peters (D- Mich.), said Alaska was “not one of my focused races.” With potentially no serious candidate running to her left, even conservative critics ac- knowledge that a vote for Jackson could make a lot of political sense for Murkowski, who will need liberal and moderate voters to put her on their November ballot, even if they do not rank her first. Suzanne Downing, a former state GOP spokeswoman who runs Must Read Alaska, a conservative politics site, said that “Republicans are not coming back under any circumstance” to Mur- kowski. So while a vote for Jack- son may harden opinions against her and give Tshibaka a new talk- ing point, she said, it could pay dividends on the other side of the political spectrum. “I’m kind of a critic of hers, but she understands her state well,” Downing said. “She’s no dummy when it comes to campaigning. She puts together a good team. And this is a vote where the Demo- crats have nowhere else to go, and Republicans aren’t coming back anyway. Everyone’s fighting over the middle 250,000 undeclared voters, the ones that are swing voters.” On the other hand, Buxton said Murkowski has “a lot to lose” if she opposes Jackson. “There’s a lot of people who would support her who I think would be really soured by that, especially running into an election year, especially at a time when the Supreme Court is more tense and political than it’s ever been,” he said. Back in the Senate, Murkow- ski’s colleagues declined to make public predictions about where she might land — and they took her at her word that political calculations won’t be at play. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) praised her “ability to navigate choppy waters” and expressed awe, 12 years later, at her write-in survival act. “She’s pretty inde- pendent, as you know,” he said. “Knowing Lisa,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), “I think Lisa is going to do what she thinks is right.”

In new landscape, Murkowski weighs a vote for Jackson

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is among a handful of Republicans who are seriously entertaining a vote for President Biden’s pending Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Senator faces reelection

under Alaska s ystem that

could reward centrism

“Everyone’s fighting

over the middle

250,000 undeclared

voters, the ones that are

swing voters.” Suzanne Downing, a former state GOP spokeswoman who runs Must Read Alaska, a conservative politics site

The Washington Post - USA (2022-04-01)

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