The Experience Miracles Podcast

Q&A: What’s Really Triggering Teen Anxiety & Depression?

May 30, 2025

Teen Anxiety and Depression: Why Nervous System Dysregulation Is the Real Root Cause

Episode 108, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: May 30, 2025 | Duration: ~19 min

Key Takeaways

  • The CDC reports that 44% of high schoolers experience persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, and 1 in 3 teenage girls have seriously contemplated suicide, twice the rate of boys. Anxiety rates have doubled since 2011 and spiked again during COVID.
  • The chemical imbalance theory, the claim that anxiety and depression are caused by low serotonin or dopamine, is scientifically loosely constructed. Traditional medicine has sold billions of dollars in medications based on this theory without ever testing actual neurotransmitter levels in patients.
  • The true root cause of teen anxiety and depression is nervous system dysregulation: children stuck in Sympathetic Dominance (chronic fight-or-flight mode) driven by four components of The Perfect Storm, prenatal stress, birth trauma, toxin exposure, and technology addiction.
  • Dysautonomia, dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, is directly linked to the surge in teen anxiety, depression, and POTS. The Vagus Nerve controls the parasympathetic “brake pedal” that calms the nervous system; when it’s compromised, teens get trapped in a three-stage progression from stress and anxiety to focus problems to full neurological exhaustion.
  • HRV (Heart Rate Variability) technology can assess nervous system dysregulation, dysautonomia, and vagus nerve exhaustion in a 3–5 minute exam, providing the measurable diagnostic baseline that the chemical imbalance model never offers.

Why Are So Many Teens Anxious and Depressed?

Teen anxiety and depression are not caused by a chemical imbalance, they are caused by nervous system dysregulation. The Autonomic Nervous System controls whether a child’s brain is in a calm, regulated state or locked in chronic fight-or-flight stress, and for millions of teens today, the system has been tipped toward overdrive since early childhood or even before birth.

The chemicals that medicine points to, serotonin, dopamine, and other neurotransmitters, do not operate independently of the nervous system. They are transmitters: their job is to carry messages within the nervous system. When the nervous system is dysregulated, the neurochemistry follows. Treating the chemistry without addressing the underlying nervous system dysfunction is like adjusting the dashboard warning lights without opening the engine.

For parents whose teens are struggling with anxiety, depression, or exhaustion that doesn’t respond to lifestyle changes or medication, the missing piece is almost always an assessment of nervous system function, specifically, whether the Vagus Nerve and Parasympathetic Nervous System are functioning well enough to counterbalance the constant sympathetic stress response driving the symptoms.

The Scope of the Teen Mental Health Crisis [0:00 – 3:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP: The job of a parent is never-ending, always changing. While we get through the infant stage, the toddler stage, the grade school and middle school stage, and we think it’s got to ease up here soon, the truth is, when we get to the teenage years, it gets harder in a lot of ways.

One of the things that is hitting our teenagers, and unfortunately it’s hitting our grade schoolers and middle schoolers as well at unheard-of rates, is anxiety and mental-emotional health challenges: anxiety, depression, emotional dysregulation, flat-out exhaustion. We’re looking at our teens and our kids and knowing something’s not right.

This has been a problem for some time. Teenagers go through a lot of different changes, from their nervous system to their hormones to how their brain and body function, and they go through a lot of challenges. School gets way harder. College and life on their own is upcoming. Friends and social circles can become so hard to navigate.

And today we are stuck in the thick of the storm. There’s another ingredient to The Perfect Storm, if you will, called technology, smartphones, and social media, this 24/7, 365 addiction to technology and the internet.

As far back as 2011, we’ve seen anxiety rates absolutely explode. They doubled in that time, and then they grew again massively during the COVID lockdowns, where kids were taken away from so many things essential to their wellbeing, even though they weren’t at significant risk from the illness driving the news coverage.

We saw another spike in anxiety, depression, and suicide rates during those years. Right now, the CDC reports that 44%, almost half, of our high schoolers report persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, and 1 in 3 teenage girls have seriously contemplated suicide, twice the rate of boys.

When the Basics Aren’t Enough, and Why Medication Falls Short [3:00 – 5:30]

There are a lot of very basic things we can do to get our teens healthy again: diet, movement, getting outside, social connection. We know those things are essential.

But what if you’ve already tried those? What if your teen is so dysregulated, so out of balance, so anxious, so depressed, and so exhausted that even the basics of good health, getting good sleep, being physically active, getting outside, hanging out with friends, being communicative and social, what if you can’t get your teen to even jumpstart because they’re so exhausted?

And what if you’ve tried medications? What if your child has struggled so much that you needed to just help get their head above water and tried anxiety medications, tried psychotropic medications? Maybe they helped symptomatically. Maybe some of the symptoms are a little bit better with medication, but those come with so many side effects and such a risk of dependency. Is a dependency and an addiction to the pharmaceutical industry really what our kids need to be healthy, happy, and vibrant?

We know that those medications can make some symptomatic improvements, but they come with both short- and long-term side-effect profiles and a lot of risk.

“Is that really what our kids need to be healthy and happy and vibrant, a dependency and an addiction to the pharmaceutical industry?”

The Chemical Imbalance Theory Doesn’t Hold Up [5:30 – 8:00]

What we really need to break down is the chemical imbalance theory that the traditional medical system has marketed and sold to us, that anxiety is a chemical imbalance, depression is a chemical imbalance, ADHD is a chemical imbalance.

They’ve told us that our kids’ brains work based on these chemicals, the serotonins, the dopamines. But let’s go deeper into those chemicals. Is the human brain and nervous system really dependent upon chemistry, or is it more dependent upon the balance, the function, the regulation of the nervous system?

Once you open the hood and look at the actual research on the chemical imbalance theory, the gig is up. It’s not solid. It is very loosely constructed scientifically. So many studies have shown that very basic things, like going out for a walk, absolutely beat the pants off many of these medications.

But those aren’t the clinical trials you’ll hear about in the doctor’s office. Because the doctor’s office doesn’t have a gym, a nutritional component, or a nervous system-focused chiropractic element. The doctor’s office is the direct portal to the pharmaceutical industry. The only studies you’ll hear about are the ones that support their theory and sell their product.

This isn’t a controversial conversation. It’s a scientific and parent-based experience conversation that says this chemical imbalance theory isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. So what’s deeper than that? What goes below?

The central and Autonomic Nervous System is where those chemicals, the serotonin, the dopamine, the hormones, the neurotransmitters, do their actual work. It’s literally in the word “neurotransmitter.” Those chemicals simply transmit messages for the nervous system.

“Those chemicals simply transmit messages for the nervous system.”

The Perfect Storm: How Teen Anxiety Builds from Birth [8:00 – 11:30]

Our kids are more stuck in sympathetic fight-or-flight stress mode than any generation of kids has ever been. Their sympathetic side of the nervous system runs on overdrive throughout most of childhood.

We can go all the way back to what we call The Perfect Storm. Many teens, when we dig into their case history, started with a high-stress fertility and pregnancy journey. There are actually clinical and scientific connections between Maternal Distress during fetal development, when the brain and nervous system were first forming, and anxiety and mental-emotional challenges later in life.

There are also strong connections to Birth Trauma and birth interventions, forceps, vacuum extraction, C-section, induction, which can physically injure the Brainstem and the Upper Cervical Spine. The brainstem is where so much of the nervous system’s balance and function is coordinated, particularly through the Vagus Nerve.

Then our kids are exposed to more toxins, more medications, more antibiotics, more corticosteroids, more over-the-counter medications, more toxins in our food and environment than ever before. And those toxins get into the body and mimic a sympathetic fight-or-flight, anxiety-inducing effect.

And then you add the fourth component of The Perfect Storm, which really hits teenagers once they get a smartphone: the addiction to technology, constant stimulation, overstimulation, and disconnection from what’s actually healthy and good for the brain once they’re stuck on a phone for even a few hours a day.

So we can go all the way back to long before they become a middle schooler or teenager. And what we know when we look at the science and case history of kids struggling with anxiety and depression is that they’ve been heading toward this imbalance for quite some time, because nerves that fire together wire together.

If they were a toddler who was wound up and impulsive, if they had focus and hyperactivity challenges in school, if they had sensory overwhelm, if they were sick a lot with gut issues, immune and inflammatory challenges, all of that disrupts brain function and nervous system function. And all of this adds up to these absolutely exploding rates of anxiety and depression in teens.

The actual foundation and root cause of anxiety and depression is an imbalance, dysfunction, and dysregulation within the nervous system.

“The actual foundation and the root cause of anxiety and depression is an imbalance, dysfunction, and dysregulation within the nervous system.”

Dysautonomia, the Vagus Nerve, and Three Stages of Dysregulation [11:30 – 14:00]

Two terms parents of teens need to know: Dysautonomia and POTS.

Dysautonomia is the catchall term for when the entire Autonomic Nervous System, which controls digestion, respiration, cardiac function, and all those autopilot functions in the body, gets stuck in fight-or-flight mode. And we know that the Autonomic Nervous System and the Vagus Nerve are very intricately connected to mental, emotional, and social health as well.

POTS is a condition exploding in our teens, and POTS and anxiety and depression are all linked together through this same dysautonomia mechanism.

Think of it as a gas pedal and a brake pedal. The sympathetic nervous system is the gas pedal, fight-or-flight, anxiety, hyperactivity. The Vagus Nerve controls the brake pedal, the parasympathetic system, where we rest, sleep, calm, and regulate. Our teens have too much gas pedal and too little brake pedal.

Now, you may be thinking: my teen has no gas pedal left. My teen is constantly, all day, every day, exhausted, they want to sleep but they’re still not rested, not recharged, not connected. That’s the final stage of this dysautonomia and Sympathetic Dominance. A child’s brain and nervous system can only run on the gas pedal 24/7 for weeks, months, years before you run out of gas entirely.

The three stages of nervous system dysregulation are:

  1. Stage one, stress and anxiety
  2. Stage two, focus problems and difficulty paying attention
  3. Stage three, absolute neurological exhaustion

Many struggling teens are at stage three. That’s why the basics feel impossible, not because of laziness or attitude, but because the nervous system has been running on overdrive for so long it has nothing left.

The Testing Problem: Medicine’s Missing Accountability [14:00 – 17:00]

So how do we find out if nervous system dysregulation is the real root cause for your child? This is where things get particularly frustrating.

Think about how medicine works everywhere else. If we suspect disc degeneration in someone’s spine, we run imaging, an X-ray, an MRI, to actually measure the level of dysfunction before recommending treatment. Shoulder injury? MRI the labrum. High cholesterol? Run a blood test. Blood pressure? Put the cuff on. That’s black and white. That’s how healthcare works when you’re doing a good job.

Now apply that logic to the chemical imbalance theory. Medicine has blamed anxiety and depression on serotonin and dopamine imbalances, sold billions of dollars of medications based on this claim, and then never run a test. There is no test to prove the theory. There is no test to measure how low your child’s serotonin actually is before prescribing. There is no test to confirm whether the medication brought them back into range.

It’s absolutely whacked that they’ve sold this chemical imbalance theory and sold enormous quantities of anxiety and depression medications, and the science is so loosely constructed that even if you’re going to hang your hat on it, test it. Tell me exactly how low my kid is on serotonin. Tell me exactly how out of balance their dopamine is. And after you give them the artificial fix, test it again to confirm it’s working.

For some reason, this department in medicine gets away without any actual testing to prove their theory and track the results of their treatment. That disconnect matters, a lot.

“Tell me exactly how low is my kid on serotonin? Tell me exactly how out of balance is their dopamine? And then after you give me the artificial fix, can you test it and make sure it’s working?”

HRV Testing and the Path to Nervous System Balance [17:00 – 19:00]

Here’s the contrast. When we recommend getting your child’s INSiGHT Scans, and especially if your child is struggling with anxiety and depression, you need to know about HRV, Heart Rate Variability technology and what it measures.

HRV technology measures nervous system dysregulation, dysautonomia, and vagus nerve exhaustion directly. It can tell you whether your child’s sympathetic nervous system is too wound up. It can tell you whether their parasympathetic regulation, rest, adaptability, and resiliency side is shut down. And it does all of this in a 3–5 minute exam, a test that actually exists, produces real data, and tracks change over time.

If the nervous system is imbalanced, the neurotransmitters are too. HRV gets to the actual root cause that the chemical imbalance theory never reached.

The answer to getting that sympathetic fight-or-flight anxiety to calm down is activating and stimulating the Vagus Nerve, boosting the brake pedal, the resiliency and regulation side of the nervous system. That is the mechanism. That is what Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care is designed to do.

After listening to this episode, go to the show notes, go to pxdocs.com, learn more about the clinical process, the INSiGHT Scans, and especially HRV. The visuals on the website will bring these concepts to life in a way that audio alone can’t.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is actually causing teen anxiety and depression?

According to Dr. Tony Ebel, the root cause of teen anxiety and depression is nervous system dysregulation, specifically, children stuck in chronic Sympathetic Dominance (fight-or-flight mode). This dysregulation often traces back to The Perfect Storm: high-stress pregnancy, Birth Trauma, toxin exposure, and technology addiction. These stressors compound over time, dysregulating the Autonomic Nervous System long before anxiety symptoms become obvious in the teen years.

Is the chemical imbalance theory behind anxiety and depression accurate?

The science behind the chemical imbalance theory is far weaker than most parents realize. Dr. Tony Ebel explains that serotonin and dopamine are neurotransmitters, messengers that serve the nervous system. When the nervous system is dysregulated, neurochemistry follows. The deeper problem is that medicine has never developed a test to measure actual serotonin or dopamine levels before prescribing medications, making the entire framework impossible to verify or track clinically.

What is dysautonomia and how does it relate to teen anxiety?

Dysautonomia is dysfunction of the Autonomic Nervous System, the system that controls digestion, breathing, heart function, and emotional regulation. When the nervous system gets stuck in sympathetic overdrive, the Vagus Nerve (which controls the calming, parasympathetic side) can’t do its job. This creates the gas-pedal-with-no-brake-pedal pattern behind teen anxiety, and it’s also directly connected to the surge in POTS diagnoses among teenagers.

What are the three stages of nervous system dysregulation in teens?

Dr. Tony Ebel describes a three-stage progression. Stage one is stress and anxiety, the nervous system is running hot. Stage two is difficulty with focus and attention, this is where many ADHD presentations fit. Stage three is neurological exhaustion, the child who seems to have no energy, can’t sleep well despite being exhausted, and can’t engage with basic daily life. Many severely struggling teens are at stage three, which is why simple lifestyle interventions feel impossible to implement.

How can I find out if my teen’s nervous system is dysregulated?

HRV (Heart Rate Variability) technology, used alongside INSiGHT Scans, can measure nervous system dysregulation, dysautonomia, and Vagus Nerve exhaustion in a 3–5 minute exam. This gives parents and practitioners actual data on how the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are functioning, the kind of objective measurement that the chemical imbalance model never provides.

How do I find a practitioner who can assess my teen’s nervous system?

The PX Docs directory lists Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care practitioners trained in INSiGHT Scanning and HRV assessment. Find a PX Docs Office Near You.

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