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2) An Alternative That Does Not Work The second major problem with Odgers' review is that she proposes an alternative to my "great rewiring" theory that does not fit the known facts. Odgers claims that the "real causes" of the crisis, from which my book "might distract us from effectively responding," are longstanding social ills such as "structural discrimination and racism, sexism and sexual abuse, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship and social isolation." She proposes that the specific timing of the epidemic, beginning around 2012, might be linked to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, which had lasting effects on "families in the bottom 20% of the income distribution," who were "also growing up at the time of an opioid crisis, school shootings, and increasing unrest because of racial and sexual discrimination and violence." I agree that those things are all bad for human development, but Odgers' theory cannot explain why rates of anxiety and depression were generally flat in the 2000s and then suddenly shot upward roughly four years after the start of the Global Financial Crisis. Did life in America suddenly get that much worse during President Obama's second term, as the economy was steadily improving? Her theory also cannot explain why adolescent mental health collapsed in similar ways around the same time in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, as Zach and I showed in this post: The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic is International, Part 1: The Anglosphere