Mind over Monsters

Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge

By: Sarah Rose Cavanagh

Narrated by: Sarah Naughton

An investigation into the mental health crisis affecting young adults today, and an impassioned argument for creating learning environments characterized both by compassion and challenge

Alarming statistics in recent years indicate that mental health problems like depression and anxiety have been skyrocketing among youth. To identify solutions, psychologist and professor Sarah Rose Cavanagh interviews a roster of experts across the country who are dedicating their lives to working with young people to help them actualize their goals, and highlights voices of college students from a range of diverse backgrounds.

Cavanagh also brings the listener on an invigorating tour of pedagogical, neuroscientific, and psychological research on mental health—one that involves her own personal journey from panic to equilibrium.

The result of these combined sources of inquiry indicates that to support youth mental health, we must create what Cavanagh calls compassionate challenge—first, we need to cultivate learning and living environments characterized by compassion, and then, we need to guide our youth into practices that encourage challenge, helping them face their fears in an encouraging, safe, and even playful way.

Mind over Monsters is a must-listen for teachers, administrators, parents, and young people themselves.

©2023 Sarah Rose Cavanagh (P)2023 Beacon Press

Critic reviews

“Educators and caregivers alike will find plenty of ways to help young people thrive.”—Publishers Weekly

“This is an important book. It makes a valuable contribution to the literature on teaching and learning, tackling an urgent mental health crisis and how we can build the learning environments that will help students overcome that crisis and thrive. As a bonus, readers will find Cavanagh’s writing witty and imaginative, giving us insights that can transform college experiences.”—Ken Bain, president of the Best Teachers Institute and author of What the Best College Teachers Do

“Most current rhetoric about teaching and learning tends to frame challenging students and acting with compassion as mutually exclusive enterprises. But, as Sarah Rose Cavanagh reminds us in this beautifully written defense of humane teaching, that dichotomy has always been a false choice. Challenge without compassion is simply hazing, but compassion without challenge atrophies the vast potential and possibilities in our students. Neither is sufficient for our moment, Cavanagh shows us. Rather, ‘compassionate challenge’ is the best way to do this work while still honoring and preserving our humanity. The crises we face are monstrous problems indeed. Mind over Monsters neither evades nor surrenders to this bleak reality but gives us the tools to create learning spaces offering both sanctuary and liberation. It is an essential book.”—Kevin Gannon, author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto