Heightened susceptibility to stress in adolescence is a specific example of the fact that puberty makes the brain more malleable, or “plastic.” This makes adolescence both a time of risk (because the brain’s plasticity increases the chances that exposure to a stressful experience will cause harm) but also a window of opportunity for advancing adolescents’ health and well-being (because the same brain plasticity makes adolescence a time when interventions to improve mental health may be more effective).[4]
