Emotional inteligence

example, heroin and cocaine use among white youth
climbed about 300 percent over the two decades before
the 1990s; for African-American youth it jumped to a
staggering 13 times the rate of twenty years before. 6
The most common cause of disability among teenagers
is mental illness. Symptoms of depression, whether
major or minor, affect up to one third of teenagers;
for girls, the incidence of depression doubles at puberty.
The frequency of eating disorders in teenage girls has
skyrocketed. 7
Finally, unless things change, the long-term prospects
for today's children marrying and having a fruitful,
stable life together are growing more dismal with each
generation. As we saw in Chapter 9, while during the
1970s and 1980s the divorce rate was around 50 percent,
as we entered the 1990s the rate among newlyweds
predicted that two out of three marriages of young
people would end in divorce.
AN EMOTIONAL MALAISE
442/661
These alarming statistics are like the canary in the coal
miner's tunnel whose death warns of too little oxygen.
Beyond such sobering numbers, the plight of today's
children can be seen at more subtle levels, in day-to-day
problems that have not yet blossomed into outright
crises. Perhaps the most telling data of all—a direct