About this item
15 revelatory strategies for raising emotionally healthy girls, based on cutting-edge science that explains the modern pressures that make it so difficult for adolescent girls to thriveAnyone caring for girls today knows that our daughters, students, and girls next door are more anxious and more prone to depression and self-harming than ever before. The question that no one has yet been able to credibly answer is Why? Now we have answers. As award-winning writer Donna Jackson Nakazawa deftly explains in Girls on the Brink, new findings reveal that the crisis facing today's girls is a biologically rooted phenomenon: the earlier onset of puberty mixes badly with the unchecked bloom of social media and cultural misogyny. When this toxic clash occurs during the critical neurodevelopmental window of adolescence, it can alter the female stress-immune response in ways that derail healthy emotional development.
About the Author
Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an award-winning journalist and internationally-recognized speaker whose work explores the intersection of neuroscience, immunology, and human emotion. She is the author of six books, including her newest, The Angel and The Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell That Changed the Course of Medicine (Ballantine, January 2020) , which illuminates the newly-understood role of microglia - an elusive type of brain cell that links our physical and mental health and offers new hope for patients suffering from depression, anxiety, and Alzheimer's. Hailed as "riveting," "stunning," and "visionary," The Angel and the Assassin elucidates the biological basis behind the mind-body connection and offers us a radically reconceived picture of human health. Donna's other books include Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal (Atria / Simon & Schuster, 2015) , The Last Best Cure (Hudson Street Press / Penguin, 2013) , The Autoimmune Epidemic (Touchstone / Simon & Schuster, 2009) , and Does Anybody Else Look Like Me? A Parent's Guide to Raising Multicultural Children (Perseus, 2003) . Her writing has been published in Wired, The Boston Globe, Stat, The Washington Post, Health Affairs, Aeon, More, Parenting, AARP Magazine, Glamour, and elsewhere. In addition to her work as a science journalist, Donna has been a keynote speaker at numerous universities, conferences and hospitals. Her lectures include the 2020 Harvard Division of Science and the Harvard Cabot Science Library Series; 2019 Care Plus Annual Conference, 2018 Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care Conference, 2018 Golisano Children's Hospital Annual Pediatric Conference, 2017 Royal Society of Medicine SIRPA Conference on Chronic Pain and Emotion, 2017 Learning and the Brain Conference, 2016 Johns Hopkins Conference on Trauma-Informed Healing, and the 2012 International Congress on Autoimmunity. She has appeared on The Today Show, National Public Radio, NBC News, and ABC News. Donna's book, Childhood Disrupted, was a finalist for the 2016 Books for a Better Life Award, and for her written contributions to the field of immunity, she has received the international AESKU Award, as well as the National Health Information Award, which recognizes the nation's best magazine articles on health. Donna received her Bachelor of Arts from Duke University and is a graduate of the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Program.
