Youth and suicide in a social media world

Youth and suicide in a social media world

Author: Charts & Leisure September 10, 2025 Duration: 35:16

In this episode of Unravelling, we are taking a moment to acknowledge September as Suicide Prevention Month, specifically World Suicide Prevention Day - September 10, 2025.  Host Mary Wilson had the opportunity to sit down with Dr Rachel Conrad, who serves as Medical Director of Adolescent Services at the Brattleboro Retreat.  Together, they discuss issues relating to youth suicide prevention, and how social media plays a role - in both contagion and prevention;  as well as how difficult it can be to recognize youth suicide risks in real life, and how our current medical systems could play a critical role in all of this.

Dr. Conrad is currently medical director of Adolescent Services at Brattleboro Retreat. She was previously medical director of Young Adult Mental Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She completed her adult psychiatry residency at Emory University School of Medicine, her child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital, and her bioethics fellowship at the Harvard Medical School. She is on faculty at Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics. Her academic work focuses on autonomy and psychiatric treatment of adolescents and young adults.  She received the Eisenhower Fellowship for her work in Youth Mental Health in 2022.

Resources: 988 suicide lifeline - please call or text 988 if you are struggling with thoughts of suicide. Help is available!


If you enjoy Unravelling, leave a positive review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to us and tell you friends about us!

And listeners, take note! We always want to hear from you with reactions, topic ideas, stories or other suggestions. Send us an email, an old fashioned voice message, or a voice memo by using unravel@brattlebororetreat.org or by calling 802-258-POD3 (802-258-7633)!


There’s a thread that connects our inner lives to the culture we live in, and Unravelling pulls on it to see what emerges. This isn’t a lecture series, but a conversation guided by therapist Kurt White and journalist Mary Wilson, who bring their distinct perspectives to every discussion. They explore how mental health is woven into everything from our daily fitness routines and societal pressures to the art we consume and the relationships we keep. In each episode, you’ll hear from experts who study the mind alongside individuals sharing their personal, lived experiences, creating a dialogue that feels both intellectually rigorous and deeply human. The aim is to move beyond simple definitions, examining how anxiety, resilience, joy, and struggle shape our collective reality. Produced by Charts & Leisure, this podcast provides a space for nuance, challenging the idea that our psychological worlds exist in a vacuum. It’s for anyone who has ever felt the tension between their private thoughts and the public world, offering not easy answers but a more textured understanding. By listening, you become part of a broader exploration into how compassion, for ourselves and our society, can actually be built from a place of genuine curiosity.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Unravelling
Podcast Episodes
Architecture of the self: Unlocking neuroplasticity [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:43
In part three of our special series, Architecture of the Self, Kurt sits down with neuroscientist and pioneer in the world of psychedelic research, Dr. Gül Dölen, to explore the concept of “critical periods,” unique wind…
Architecture of the Self: Diagnosis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:26
This episode is the first in a series of four episodes that we are calling "the architecture of the self" wherein we explore human development, genetics and epigenetics, memory and trauma, and, today, diagnosis and the d…
Be yourself, it takes a lifetime: Gary Gulman [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:03
In this very special episode, Kurt sits down with comedian Gary Gulman to talk about recovery from serious mental health problems, depression, getting treatment and his journey of becoming such a powerful advocate on beh…
Demystifying non-suicidal self-injury [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:30
In this episode, Kurt sits down with guest Dr. Stephanie Jarvi Steele, a clinician and researcher who has extensive experience and knowledge about "non-suidical self-injury". In this detailed and thought provoking interv…
Our recipes, ourselves: The cultural psychology of food [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:19
In this week’s episode of Unravelling, we have a bit of a special episode: a roundtable discussion with our hosts Mary and Kurt, joined by our producers Hans and Andrew, and our guest, Professor Sean Duffy. Sean is a psy…
Large group dynamics and the origins of human aggression [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:22
This episode of Unravelling has Dr. Kevin Volkan, psychologist, psychoanalyst, professor, and author of Human Aggression, War, and Genocide joins Kurt to talk about large group psychology and continue the conversation ab…