co-authored by Charles Coleman and Hanna Johansen
The Troubling State of Adolescent Mental Health in America:
“Saying the (Disturbingly) Quiet Part Out Loud”
In this candid Coming-of-Age Multi-Generational Family Drama of an Adolescent Girl Struggling with Psychological Trauma from a Shocking Betrayal of Ethical Trust.
BOSTON. JULY 23, 2026. Seasoned HarperCollins/Row author, Charles Coleman, teams up with sixteen-year-old Hanna Johansen and her psychiatrist (Alexa Muybridge) to co-author this dramatic coming-of-age psycho-social mental health exposé of the first order: the aftershocks of childhood psychological trauma and the ensuing struggle for survival as a reflection of the epidemic contagion of mental illness among young Americans today.
Written in the immediacy of a multigenerational family struggle in the post-COVID world of gender controversy, parental controls, teachers’ ideological agendas, conflicted relationships, and exposure to a persistently pernicious Internet, this novel is likely the first ever to unveil the cumulative, detrimental socio-psychological effects clearly portending America’s looming mental health crisis afflicting the minds of our youngest and most vulnerable netizens.
Based on actual adolescent psychiatric cases, and written as historical fiction in a fascinating interactive narrative, with (anonymized) recorded transcripts of tele-therapy sessions between Hanna and Alexa, Coleman and Johansen compassionately orchestrate this eerie, precarious and at times gut-wrenching descent into the heart of Hanna’s darkness and her attempts at self-extinction, and on into the light-of-learning to once again trust in the innate goodness and rehabilitative love of family, friends and mental health professionals.
Applying what Alexa calls a “gentling approach” to dialectical behavioral and creative exposure therapies (via Hanna’s songs and journal), she cautiously leads Hanna, and the reader, to the precipice of the frightful exhumation of her betrayed Self and the inevitable, long-anticipated endgame: “asphyxiation by submersion,” the same method used by her alter ego to end her life.
Co-author Hanna and her personal struggles serve as a metaphor for opening a much wider window into the murky collective conscious of a society no longer competing with one another for “survival of the (physically) fittest” but rather for the mental wherewithal to withstand “the slings and arrows of outrageous dysfunction.” If “only the strong survive,” then our own innate Sense of Self, conditioned by resilience-reinforced mindful reflexes, and the power of our tried-and-true convictions, will keep us strong and mentally prepared enough to withstand today’s assaults and hopefully tomorrow’s. That is a premise in this provocative investigative study… lessons of a lifetime that Hanna learns the hard way.
To that end, the authors cleverly expose not only the sources of many “modern” mental maladies, but also take the reader on a virtual tour of “The American Museum of Mental Health” to illustrate the numerous, well-intended but ultimately failed attempts to “treat” the burgeoning ranks of the mentally ill: a harbinger of what really lies ahead starting with the canaries in the mind-shaft. . . the youth of America and the emergence of the uniquely American adolescent psychotype.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
CHARLES COLEMAN, PhD, began his long and distinguished career in mental healthcare even before working with Vietnam Vets committed to, and confined in, one of the Army’s only dedicated military psychiatric hospitals in the early ‘70s, as so graphically memorialized in his critically-acclaimed American cult-classic, Sergeant Back Again, (HarperCollins, 1980), “The Vietnam War Novel that Made PTSD Real!” re-released by PTSD Press in Sergeant Back Again: The Anthology of Critical and Clinical Commentary in 2010. He’s a recognized author and lecturer on the causal relationships between physiological diseases and mental disorders with a focus on the origins and treatment strategies for both military and civilian populations afflicted with traumatic stress disorders.
HANNA JOHANSEN, fifteen-and-half at the time this story takes place, is a first-time author who is quick to point out in her “Afterwords” to The Gentling of Hanna Johansen: A Betrayal of Trust, that her “participation” in co-authoring this novel was the last thing she ever wanted, especially when the story suddenly becomes so personal, candid and shocking that not even she can write about all of it. Hanna is “as honest as I know how to be” in the ways in which she reveals her multiple personalities, whether in the lyrics of her songs, her immersion in risky and self-destructive behaviors, her warmth and love and humor, or her devotion to her friends, all of which are acknowledged with thoughtful understanding by each of the memorable characters in her book.
PTSD PRESS
Publisher: PTSD PRESS
Website URL: www.ptsdpress.com
Press Release Date: June 23, 2026
Genre: Historical Fiction, Psychological Thriller, Family Drama, Coming-of-Age
Date of Publication: April 17, 2026
ISBN: 978-9-697592-11-1 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-971659-23-7 (eBook)
ISBN: 978-1-971659-24-4 (Hardcover)
PAGES: 361
CONTACT: author@ptsdpress.com
Also Available in Spanish: El Amansamiento de Hanna Johansen: Una traición a la confianza. On AMAZON BOOKS.