PBS Show Gives Families Tools to Improve Mental Health

When I was growing up in the early aughts, parents and their kids weren’t exactly having heart-to-hearts about their feelings, and our perspective on mental health came mostly from the tabloids that covered Britney Spears publicly shaving her head. But the culture has shifted drastically in just the past two generations.

By the time my Gen Alpha daughter was born, mental health had become one of the most important topics. They want to talk about it with their families, seek out doctors to help them understand their issues, and they are more open, honest, and vulnerable about their mental health than they ever have been. 

That’s the environment in which actor Tyler Coe launched his new PBS show, How Are We Today? The sitcom-style show, aimed at viewers 11 years and older, is guided by a core mission: to normalize mental health struggles, inspire people to treat each other with empathy and compassion, and educate viewers on how complex our brains are and how they work.

The Values That Inspired ‘How Are We Today?’

The mission is a deeply personal one for the team behind the show. Coe, who is bipolar, worked through substance abuse issues and a suicide attempt. The rest of the cast, Barbara Dunkelman, Mariel Salcedo, and Elyse Willems, have experience with depression, anxiety, and ADHD.

“That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to make this show, is that the stories we hear, the strife we have to go through, the amount of time it takes—we have to start shortening those years. We have to put a dent in that timeline,” Coe tells Parents.

In other words, he wants people to get help and access to mental health resources sooner, ideally when they are still adolescents, before they go through anything close to the trauma he endured.

“It is targeted at that danger zone, when almost 50% of all mental health conditions come online,” Coe says. 

That being said, Coe wants to emphasize that How Are We Today? “is literally for everyone.”

What Can Viewers Expect from ‘How Are We Today?’

How Are We Today? is set in an apartment building where Coe’s character (also known as Tyler), and his neighbors live; much of the action takes place right in his living room, where the friends feel safe and comfortable. The plot follows Coe and his friends as they work through their own mental health issues, and learn how to address them safely and effectively.

Each of the first season’s 7 episodes covers a different mental health issue, from how to handle a panic attack, the challenges of living with ADHD, and how to differentiate between feeling blue or sad and actual depression. These are heavy, hard subjects that even adults have trouble addressing in their own lives, but Coe thinks we shouldn’t shy away from addressing them with tweens and teens. 

“Kids nowadays can handle it,” he says. “They can handle it better than we did. They’re not stupid.”

Inspired by the likes of Fred Rogers and Levar Burton (the host of Reading Rainbow), Coe says that the core tenets of the show are “kindness, education, science, and working together.”

How ‘How Are We Today?’ Can Help People Struggling With Their Mental Health

Coe collaborated with Dr. Erin Newins, a licensed clinical psychologist, to make sure the show emphasizes both the lived experience of mental health problems and how those problems can affect day-to-day life, as well as the science behind mental health and how it’s treated.

Dr. Erin (as she’s known on the show) provides guidance in terms of how episodes are structured, what issues they cover, and what tools the show offers viewers to address their mental health separates How Are We Today? from the less rigorously researched and vetted advice that an increasing number of teens are using to self-diagnose. 

“There are good people online that are influencers or content creators that are focused on mental health, but it’s splintered, which can lead to a lot of dangerous things,” explains Coe. “It can lead to diagnosing you because of what your sign is.”

What Coe also felt was missing from the discourse around mental health is practical advice that anyone watching this content can take away. Mental health advocacy, he says, “is through the roof,” but that’s enough to actually help people.

“I don’t think it’s enough to just talk about these things,” he continues. “The actionable items are completely missed. So Erin adds into that piece of like, we are giving you real-time things to do.”

‘How Are We Today?’ Offers Viewers Practical Tools

For some families, discussing mental health with kids or parents might be unfamiliar territory. In order to draw those viewers in, Dr. Erin didn’t want to make working on your mental health seem overwhelming, intimidating, or even embarrassing. Instead, she says she hopes it feels like “a fluid, very authentic, very friendly conversation.”

When it came time to develop the mental health skills and activities that viewers could use at home, however, that was trickier. 

“I’m very aware of people who present information publicly as if this is going to work for everybody,” says Dr. Erin. “I think the most important part is that we were very careful and intentional about what we chose.”

Dr. Erin says she wanted the skills included in the show to be ones “that pretty much anybody could pick up at any given time [that] wouldn’t cause any harm.” 

For instance, in the episode on panic attacks, the cast does an awareness activity. Awareness activities encourage self-reflection and can include activities like a body scan, breathing exercises, or journaling. These are simple, practical exercises that families can do together, or encourage their children to try. 

‘How Are We Today?’ Will Inspire Important Conversations Between Parents and Their Kids

The show is an especially useful resource for parents—not just parents with mental health issues of their own, or who are raising kids with mental health issues, but also any parent who wants to have more open, frank conversations with their family about their emotions. 

“The most important thing is opening the line of communication, and I think that’s the hardest, because we as parents are so task-focused,” says Dr. Erin. “We have things we have to do, we have lessons we have to teach.” 

Watching How Are We Today? as a parent alongside your kids can help you figure out how to simply start the conversation. 

“What this show offers is an opportunity to be in the same place while the conversation is happening,” explains Dr. Erin. “And sometimes it’s literally that simple. ‘Have you ever felt that way?’ is all you have to [say]. And then the door is open.”

While some parents might feel awkward broaching a potentially sensitive subject with their already surly teens or might be holding onto their fear that they failed a child who is struggling with their mental health, others might think that just because they aren’t dealing with a serious issue like depression, the themes of How Are We Today? don’t apply to them or their families.

But like therapy, this show is not “reserved for people who are broken, who have something wrong with them,” as Dr. Erin puts it. After all, “Everybody has mental health.”

“If you’re going through life,” Coe chimes in, “This is a good show for you.”