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 thrive

Anyone on the front lines of caring for girls today knows that our daughters, students, and the girl 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 today’s growing girl crisis is a biologically-rooted phenomenon: the unchecked bloom of social media and cultural misogyny mixes badly with puberty, the onset of which is happening earlier. 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.

But our new understanding of the biology of modern girlhood yields good news, too. It turns out that though puberty is a particularly critical and vulnerable period, it is also a time during which the female adolescent brain is highly flexible and responsive to certain kinds of support and scaffolding. Indeed, we know now that a girl’s innate sensitivity to her environment can, with the right conditions, become her superpower. Jackson Nakazawa details the common denominators of such support, shedding new light on the keys to preventing mental health concerns in girls as well as helping those who are already struggling. Drawing on insights from both the latest science and interviews with girls themselves, she carefully guides adults through fifteen “antidote” strategies to help any teenage girl thrive in the face of stress, including how to nurture the parent-child connection through the rollercoaster of adolescence, (and how to navigate your own difficult feelings, so they don’t sabotage your connection), core ingredients to building a sense of safety and security for your teenage girl at home, and how to foster the foundations of long-term resilience in our girls so they’re ready to face the world.

Neuroprotective and healing, the strategies in Girls on the Brink amount to a new playbook for how we—parents, families, and the human tribe—can secure a healthy emotional inner life for all of our girls.Donna Jackson Nakazawa is the author of four books exploring the intersection of neuroscience, immunology, and emotion, including The Angel and the Assassin, named one of the best books of 2020 by Wired magazine, and Childhood Disrupted, which was a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Award. Her work has appeared in Wired, Stat, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Health Affairs, Parenting, AARP Magazine, and Glamour and has been featured on the cover of Parade as well as in Time; she has appeared on the Today show, NPR, NBC News, and ABC News. Jackson Nakazawa is also the creator and founder of the narrative writing-to-heal program, Your Healing Narrative: Write-to-Heal With Neural Re-Narrating™. She is a regular speaker at universities, including the Harvard Division of Science Library Series, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Arizona. She lives with her family in Maryland.

“Invaluable not only in understanding girls’ vulnerabilities, but in providing useful, actionable ways to build resilience and foster well-being.”
—The Washington Post “Best Books of 2022”

After describing the environmental and physiological “toxic stressors” on girls, Nakazawa offers simple but powerful ways to combat them. She actually has a step-by-step program for how to do it.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Best mental health book of 2022” 
—Mashable

“A perceptive, informative examination of the problems young American girls face and how to change them . . . All of the author’s advice is sound, and her insights into how to start the process of change make this an important book for parents of girls.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“The smart analysis and wealth of neuroscientific and psychological research adds nuance to public discourse around girls’ mental health. . . . Timely and incisive, this issues an acute warning that the kids are not alright.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The signs are everywhere: girls are struggling, their mental well-being in decline. Enter Donna Jackson Nakazawa. She has dug deep, connected the dots and, in Girls on the Brink, offers powerful, hopeful strategies to help parents raise daughters who are resilient, self-aware and thriving.”
—Peggy Orenstein, New York Times bestselling author of Girls and Sex

“Girls on the Brink provides a powerful roadmap for raising resilient girls. Every parent needs to read this book!”
—Louann Brizendine, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Female Brain and The Upgrade

 “This is the book we all need to understand and guide girls right now. Without positioning boys against girls, Donna Jackson Nakazawa is giving us a road map to be better; I want every teacher, coach, parent, grandparent, and anyone who cares about girls to read this book and take it to heart.”
—Rosalind Wiseman, New York Times bestselling author of Queen Bees and Wannabes

 “This is a brave and important book; the challenging stories – both personal and scientific — will make you think, and, hopefully, act.”
—Bruce Perry, MD, New York Times bestselling co-author of What Happened to You?

“Some books translate science into understandable language; some offer advice in the form of actionable steps; and some weave stories that grab you by the heart. This one—miraculously—does all three.”
—Cara Natterson, MD, bestselling author of The Care and Keeping of You and Decoding Boys

 With detailed prescriptions for supporting the unique needs of girls, this is not only a book parents will dog-ear for solutions to everyday adolescent turmoil, but a call to action for our society to quell the crises closing in on growing up female. It is a balm of a book.”
—Michelle Icard, author of Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen