I was an anxious teenager. For me, the issue was always worry: excessive, awful, irrational thoughts that started when I was about 10 and reached their crescendo when I was an undergraduate, when things fell apart entirely and I needed a lot of treatment to learn how to function again. Before I got help, I had no language to describe how I felt and no adults around me who understood what was happening.

As the public conversation about anxiety continues to swell, I’ve been asking myself: would I have been better off as an anxious teenager today? Despite all the recent awareness-raising efforts, the reduction in stigma, the lessons in schools — and despite how hard it was navigating my own anxiety in silence — I find myself answering ‘no’.

On the one hand, of course it’s better today. I didn’t even know the word ‘anxiety’ until I was about 20. If my parents and my school had understood what was happening — if any adult in my life knew that, when I refused to do something, it wasn’t because I was being rude or difficult but because I was terrified — my life could have been very different. I have no doubt that getting proper help would have made life far easier then and would also have prevented things from escalating so badly later on.

But growing up now would only be better if it meant access to support, and I’m not sure that’s what it’s like being an anxious teenager today. Awareness-raising efforts in schools, online and elsewhere have flooded teenagers’ minds with the concept of anxiety, but funding for services hasn’t caught up, and light-touch school interventions often aren’t enough. We are now in a situation where many teens know or believe they are anxious but aren’t getting the help they need to manage it. And I’m not sure that’s better than not having the awareness at all.