Title:Alumnus, wife co-author book on teens & screens

Mark Goldstein (M’72) and Myrna Chandler Goldstein recently wrote a new book, How Technology, Social Media, and Current Events Profoundly Affect Adolescents, about mental health challenges facing adolescents.

During his nearly five decades treating adolescents, Mark Goldstein, founding chief of Mass General Hospital’s Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine division, noticed a shift from patients presenting with biological or physical problems to patients presenting with more mental health issues, particularly as social media expanded and young people spent more time on their screens.

“I used to see an occasional patient who was depressed, but at the end of my practice in 2021, probably half of the kids I saw had some type of mental health issue,” Mark Goldstein says.

The Goldsteins began writing the book in 2021, after the COVID-19 pandemic had drastically increased technology use in lieu of in-person meetings—and kept Mark Goldstein limited to providing virtual telehealth.

Though the research-focused book is meant for professionals like clinicians, psychologists, and nurses, the Goldsteins hope it will also appeal to parents and teachers. The book delves into the 18 most pressing topics that can affect modern teenagers’ wellbeing, from COVID-19 to war, bereavement, mortality, and divorce—many of which are interconnected.

The couple began writing books in the mid-1990s, after Mark Goldstein, then an advisor for pre-med students at MIT, noticed there weren’t many medical school application guides in bookstores. The Definitive Guide to Medical School Admission, published in 1996, was their first joint publication, and Myrna Chandler Goldstein went onto a career focused on medical journalism. They’ve since written an additional 17 books together.

Mark Goldstein counts immunologist Joseph Bellanti, M.D., as a longtime role model, and his most influential School of Medicine professor.

“He was an outstanding and compassionate clinician… and a great humanitarian,” Goldstein says. “He gave fantastic lectures on infectious disease. I think of all the people I met, which were hundreds or maybe thousands, he was the most inspirational model of a great physician.”

Goldstein also credits Georgetown with teaching him to “consider in every patient the physical, the mental, and the social aspects of their illness.” For example, a diagnosis of pneumonia may also impact a patient socially, academically, financially, and more. “Georgetown helped me look at the complete patient,” Goldstein says.