Entries by Jean Rhodes

Resources for helping youth navigate mental health issues

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A Mental Health Crisis Among Our Youth Mental health issues among children and teens in the United States are on the rise. Learn more about this worrisome trend from various angles. The Toll of Covid-19: During the pandemic, the number of children and adolescents needing urgent mental health care spiked. Rise in Suicide Among Black Youth: A recent study uncovered a sharp […]

Summer memories and a major study on friendship and mobility

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by Jean Rhodes When I was growing up Allendale, NJ in the 1960’s and 70’s, a family’s social class didn’t define life and determine social mobility the way it does now. Resources varied pretty widely across neighborhoods and families, but Allendale’s 6,000 residents all seemed to know each other. We all spent our long, unscheduled […]

Rooted in Relationships Podcast series with guest Jean Rhodes: Mentorship is a rich opportunity for positive development from youth to adulthood

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Episode 2.6 – Jean Rhodes – Mentorship is a rich opportunity for positive development from youth to adulthood The mentor-mentee relationship can be particularly rich for both individuals. Mentors can connect mentees with opportunities and guide them through important educational, professional and personal stages in their lives. In this episode of Rooted in Relationships, former […]

Why mentor?: New study has surprising implications for mentor recruitment and retention

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Jean Rhodes Despite strenuous efforts, many mentoring programs  struggle to recruit enough volunteers for all of the youth who need them.  A major barrier is the fact that, unlike other forms of volunteering, mentoring requires a sustained and relatively intensive  commitment. In some mentoring programs, for example, volunteers are expected to meet with their mentees […]

Meet Professor John M. Gottman, a leading expert on relationships

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Editor’s Note: Professor John Gottman of the University of  Washington is one of the leading scholars on marital and other relationships and the factors that both strengthen and diminish understanding and closeness. Gottman is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington. He co-directos the Washington’s Relationship Research Institute and the Gottman Institute with his wife. In […]

Four ways that mentors can help address the mental health crisis

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By Jean Rhodes Since the early 1990’s, the major risks facing young people have shifted from physical struggles like teen pregnancy and substance to mental health struggles like anxiety, depression, suicide and self-harm. Indeed,  the American Academy of Pediatrics recently issued a report noting that “mental health disorders are the most common cause cause of […]

Winner takes all?: Mentoring programs in the age of inequality

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By Jean Rhodes In his recent best-selling book, Winner Takes All, writer Anand Giridharadas sheds light on the complexities and potentially self-serving nature of focusing on individual solutions and one-off opportunities in an unjust world. Through this lens, private solutions, including youth programs that promote skills, can be seen as a counteroffer to essentially public […]