Childhood anxiety has been on the rise. Our instinct as parents is often to get more involved. But what if that’s part of the problem?

The statistics are grim. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), among U.S. adolescents ages 12 to 17 surveyed between 2021 and 2023, 20% reported symptoms of anxiety in the past two weeks, and 18% reported symptoms of depression. In 2023, almost 40% of high school students reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, 28.5% reported poor mental health, 20.4% said they had seriously considered attempting suicide, and 9.5% reported having attempted suicide. Suicide rates for 10- to 24-year-olds increased by 62% from 2007 to 2021.

What should be good news is that psychotherapy is more accessible and ubiquitous than ever. Especially among young people.

But mental illness, self-harm, and suicide have continued to rise even as more young people seek therapy. And standard psychotherapy can sometimes exacerbate some mental health issues: Not only can a constant focus on our own thoughts and feelings lead to self-preoccupation, talk therapy can devolve into venting. Research indicates that venting makes people feel worse, not better

Of course, the exposure therapy component of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the gold standard for treating anxiety. Instead of avoiding what scares you, you face it, gradually and deliberately, until your brain learns there’s nothing to fear. But surprisingly few therapists use it—only 10-30%. Even among those whose theoretical orientation is CBT, in one survey, only about one in three reported using exposure to treat anxiety disorders.

Most therapists don’t seem to want to push their clients into being that uncomfortable, especially if those clients are kids. Most kids don’t want to sit in an office and stare down their worst fears after a full day of school. And it seems that most parents are unwilling to require their children to be uncomfortable.

More than 20 years ago, *Psychology Today *Editor at Large Hara Estroff Marano wrote, “Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they’re breaking down in record numbers.”

In our happiness-oriented therapeutic culture, the insight that suffering is part of the human condition—and that human growth and development is largely a product of what we do with our suffering—seems to have been lost. Instead of helping young people grapple with suffering, we’ve led them to believe that if they’re not happy, there’s something wrong, someone to blame, and some trauma-informed response to which they’re entitled.

Until now.

Board-certified clinical psychologist Camilo Ortiz, an associate professor at Long Island University, developed a new therapy for anxious young people — one he told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival is a “stupidly easy idea.” He calls it independence therapy.

Research on independence therapy suggests that it’s at least as effective as exposure therapy, works more quickly, and young people don’t need to be persuaded to do anything they don’t want to do.

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Instead of forcing kids to face their fears, it invites them into independence. Kids choose something they want to do on their own but haven’t yet been allowed to. They do one activity a day without help. No therapist cajoling. No parents hovering. Just a simple, practical step into the real world.

Ride the bus alone. Bake something without supervision. Walk somewhere with friends. They will miss a stop, burn the muffins, and even get lost. But they will also figure out how to manage.

These are not direct exposures to specific fears. They’re sneaky exposures to risk, discomfort, and unpredictability—or as Ortiz calls them “trojan horse exposures”—in that kids are having a great time doing them and don’t even realize the anti-anxiety effects. In other words, these are exposures to everything we’ve spent the last 20 years trying to protect kids from. And overprotection itself causes problems.

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According to Ortiz, parenting today is defined by three unspoken assumptions: 1) More parenting is better than less. 2) Children should be shielded from discomfort, disappointment, distress, and danger. And 3) misbehavior is always a symptom of something else.

But all three are wrong. And taken together, these misapprehensions have created a generation of kids who are over-scheduled, over-managed, and underprepared. They’re struggling not because they’re inherently fragile but because they’ve been deprived of the very experiences that could make them strong.

Ortiz puts it plainly: Kids need practice dealing with life. Not curated simulations but the real thing—where things go wrong and no adult is there to solve their problems.

As it turns out, that’s how confidence is built. Not from praise but from proof.

One girl who was terrified to sleep in her own bed chose to take the city bus to school. She missed her stop, asked a stranger for help, and found her way back. That night, she slept alone for the first time. She didn’t need a coping strategy. She needed a reason to believe in herself.

In a pilot study, middle schoolers who practiced daily independence activities saw anxiety levels drop within two weeks. That’s faster than traditional CBT and faster than most medications.

We’re surrounded by a culture that expects highly involved parenting. But the path to resilience doesn’t run through protection. It runs through challenge, through experience, through failure, recovery, and growth.

Kids know this intuitively. They want to stretch themselves. They want to prove themselves. They want to go out and come back changed.

If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: Do less. Let your kids fall short and figure it out.

They will grow. And so will you.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025, June 5). Data and statistics on children’s mental health.

Verlenden, J. V., Fodeman, A., Wilkins, N., et al. (2024). Mental health and suicide risk among high school students and protective factors — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2023. MMWR Supplements, 73 (Suppl. 4), 79‑86.

Curtin, S. C. (2023, June). Suicide and homicide death rates among youth and young adults aged 10–24: United States, 2001–2021 (NCHS Data Brief No. 471). National Center for Health Statistics.

Terlizzi, E. P., & Schiller, J. S. (2022, September). Mental health treatment among adults aged 18–44: United States, 2019–2021 (NCHS Data Brief No. 444). National Center for Health Statistics.

Kliff, S. (2023, February 22). More people got mental‑health treatment during the pandemic. Time.

Nguyen, K. H., Liu, C. H., McCollum, J., Baldwin, G. T., Lu, H., & Park-Lee, E. (2023). Receipt of mental health services in the past year among U.S. adults aged 18–64 years, by age and race and ethnicity — National Health Interview Survey, United States, 2021. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 72(43), 1133–1138.

Becker-Haimes, EM et al. Predictors of clinician use of exposure therapy in community mental health settings. J Anxiety Disord. 2017 Jun:49:88-94.

Langthorne D., Beard J., Waller G. Therapist factors associated with intent to use exposure therapy: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Vol. 52, No. 4, 2023.

Bushman, B. J. (2002). Does venting anger feed or extinguish the flame? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(6), 724‑731.

Ortiz, C. D., & Blakely, L. R. (2024). Independence therapy: A novel behavioral treatment for childhood anxiety. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 97, 102800.

Marano, H. E. (2004, November 1). A nation of wimps. Psychology Today.