Adolescent mental health has become a major casualty of conflict, persecution, and climate crisis. Adolescents who have had to leave everything they know behind to flee to safety are often forced to take on the pressures and responsibilities of adulthood, before their time.In episode 4 of GAGE’s podcast series, Adolescents in Crisis: Unheard Voices, we hear from 18-year-old Syrian refugee Kareem who started going to school in Lebanon, but dropped out because his family needed him to earn a wage for them to survive. He says: “The main reason that made my family leave Syria and come to Lebanon was the war that made no differentiation between civilians and militants. Everyone could be killed and there was no security. (In Lebanon) I feel that I am not productive. I can’t express my skills, my dreams. I have no expectation in life.”We hear from 21 year old Rami, a Syrian adolescent living in Lebanon who lives with 12 members of his family in a two-room apartment. Rami dropped out of school at 13 to be the main breadwinner for the family because his father had cancer. “It was very psychologically distressing to leave school and start to work. Normal people have the chance to live their lives without having to do these hard jobs before reaching the age of 18”, he says.The economic crisis in Lebanon has hit the country’s nearly 7 million people hard. A recent UN report says poverty has drastically increased, with 82 % of people in Lebanon now living without a proper means of support.Episode 4 focuses on adolescent refugees and their mental health, drawing on GAGE research with hundreds of adolescents as it follows their life path over nine years. We hear from those working with adolescents in the Lebanon and Ethiopia who believe that hearing from the young people themselves is key to finding solutions to the growing mental health crisis. This episode’s guests:• Assem Chrief, The Lebanese Organization of Studies and Training (LOST)• Marcel Saleh, GAGE researcher, Lebanon• Kiya Gezahegne, GAGE researcher, Ethiopia• Kareem (pseudonym) – 18-year-old Syrian boy living in Lebanon. Can’t sleep at night. Frustrated because he is working in a hard labour construction environment, and he wants to continue his education.• Rami (pseudonym) 21-year-old Syrian youth boy living in Lebanon. Works as a painter/decorator. Feeling hopeless.*The names are pseudonyms to protect individual adolescent identities