Build Up Boys Interviews Dr. Katie Hurley, DSW, LCSW, psychotherapist, author, and educator

Dr. Katie Hurley is a child and adolescent psychotherapist, VP of Community Initiatives at the Jed Foundation, and author of No More Mean Girls and Breaking the Boy Code.

Dr. Katie’s path into this work started at 16, after watching one of her closest friends struggle with her mental health. At the same time, Katie was quietly struggling too: anxiety that showed up as a constant lump in her throat and times when she could barely get out of bed. Neither she nor her parents had the language yet to recognize it as anxiety and depression.

That early experience deepened years later when her father died by suicide, seemingly out of nowhere. It was only afterward, piecing things together with her mom, that the quiet signals became visible in hindsight, things that had seemed odd at the time but not alarming enough to raise real concern.

That loss became the throughline of her life’s work: teaching people how to ask the hard questions before it's too late.

In this conversation, Katie breaks down why depression in boys and men often looks like anger and insomnia instead of sadness, why “how was your day” in the car never works (and what does), and how the manosphere has left the web and come into classrooms all over America and all over the world. She’s also refreshingly honest about her own fumbling toward calm — deep breathing, the Calm app, and a sister she can call to say "OMG, porn" and just be met with "yes, let's talk about it."

This one is for every parent who suspects something's off but can't quite name it, and every parent trying to figure out how to talk to their son before the algorithm gets there first.