Episode
The Psychology of Youth Mental Health | Ross Szabo
- Published
- Jul 22, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3975
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- https://findingmastery.com/podcasts/ross-szabo
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Summary
What if the kids who look like they’re doing just fine on the outside are quietly struggling to make sense of what’s happening on the inside? Ross Szabo is one of the leading voices in youth mental health education: founding Wellness Director at Geffen Academy at UCLA, founder of the Human Power Project, co-author of Behind Happy Faces , and author of A Kids Book About Anxiety . His story starts long before the titles. Born into a family with severe mental health disorders and addiction, Ross was 11 when he visited his older brother in a psychiatric ward, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder himself at 16, and coped with drinking that began at age 12. In his senior year of high school, after months of crippling depression, he attempted to take his own life… and this occurred while serving as class president, playing varsity basketball, and carrying a high GPA. On the outside, everything looked fine. The inside was a different story. That distance between the outside and the inside became the through line of his life’s work. The idea Ross has organized his career around sounds simple: treat mental health the same way we treat physical health. That means a clear definition, a shared language, and trainable skills. His definition is a helpful place to start… mental health is not about having a problem, it’s how you address the different challenges in your life. At Geffen Academy, he built what he describes as the only program in the country where students learn about mental health and healthy relationships once a week, every week, from grade six through grade 12, timed to the second largest period of brain growth, which happens between the ages of 12 to 25. His graduates report feeling far more prepared for college than their peers, especially in the interpersonal sense: l…