Teen Anxiety, Depression, and Substance Use: Conversations with Dr. Samuel Meisel about the interaction of Social Relationships, the developing brain, and the choices we make

Monday, March 10th @7:30pm, LS Lecture Hall

As parents, teachers, and members of the educational community, we have been witnessing an increase in our adolescents' anxiety and depression levels.  Some of these symptoms are easy to detect, while others are harder to see and might conceal our students’ suffering. Recent surveys also show that adolescents’ substance use has increased in our own community, compared to prior years and other towns around us. 

How does anxiety, depression, and substance use interact with adolescent brain development?  Are there any connections between these events? Can we help our students as they struggle with choices that impact their health?  How can we, the adults around, communicate with teenagers who don’t want or don’t know how to ask for help? 

Finding answers to these and other questions can be hard, and LS Community Connections feels fortunate to have Dr. Samuel Meisel* to join us for a night of discussion on the teen brain, teen anxiety and depression, and effective parenting practices. 

Join us for a brief lecture from Dr. Meisel, to be followed by a conversation about how all adults in the community can work to help our students navigate difficult times.

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*Dr. Samuel N. Meisel is an Assistant Professor of Boston University, School of Psychology, and the Director of the SUMMIT Lab. He is also a Sudbury resident, and is looking forward to helping our own community and students to grow healthier and stronger. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York in 2020. He completed his pre-doctoral internship at Brown University. Dr. Meisel completed a two-year NIAAA-funded F32 postdoctoral fellowship and then a two-year NIAAA-funded K99 postdoctoral fellowship at E. P. Bradley Hospital and Brown University’s Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies. He joined the BU faculty in 2024. His research focuses on social relationships, such as peer and caregiver relationships, and how they interact with multiple levels of influence (e.g., temperament, schools, neighborhoods) to influence adolescent substance use etiology and treatment. The overarching questions that guide his work include (1) What are the developmental pathways leading to adolescent substance use? (2) What are the key ingredients of adolescent substance use treatments that lead to behavior change? (3) How do we leverage developmental science and work on key ingredients to improve and scale adolescent substance use treatments? (https://www.bu.edu/psych/profile/samuel-meisel/)