Young adult dystopian novels like Divergent and The Hunger Games may have ruled the marketplace in the 2010s, but now there's a new trend in young adult literature. Stories of teens committing (or ideating) suicide have become the new obsession. But why?

In “Death and the Midlife Crisis” psychoanalyst Elliot Jacques found that his patients were flourishing but had a sense of malaise and meaninglessness associated with death. Philosopher Kieran Setiya thinks that the answer to the midlife crisis is to pursue activities that do not necessarily have a particular end point.