Goldie Hawn: Poor mental health is contagious, and it's affecting our kids

In 2003, Goldie Hawn created MindUP to teach kids about mental health. Now, she speaks on how it's making a difference nationwide.
MindUp for Life is a 15-lesson social and emotional learning program for schools, created by the Goldie Hawn Foundation in partnership with researchers and scientists, that teaches kids about how their brains work and how to develop optimism and resilience. The program now serves children, parents and educators in 47 countries.

Hawn was worried about kids' mental health 20 years ago. The problem has only exploded since then. This week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy sounded the alarm in a column for USA TODAY Opinion.

"Since the pandemic began, anxiety, depression, loneliness and negative emotions and behaviors have increased among young people," he wrote. "Imagine a high school with 1,000 students. Now imagine about 450 of them saying they are persistently sad or hopeless, 200 saying they’ve seriously considered suicide, and nearly 100 saying they’ve tried to end their own life over the past year. That is the state of youth mental health in America."