The pandemic has taken its toll on mental health of kids and teenagers—and parents need to know the warning signs, before something catastrophic happens.

That's the message of a new series of PSAs from Sandy Hook Promise and BBDO New York. Rather than graphically focusing on gun violence and school shootings, as in previous work such as 2019's "Back to school essentials" and 2016's  "Evan," the new work takes a different tack. With a focus on prevention, it depicts, via a series of images and short vignettes, how a year of stress and trauma has given rise to various forms of youth violence, including suicide and self-harm as well as potential gun violence.

One spot, for example, is titled "How to make a homemade bomb" and chillingly shows how a combination of lockdown, isolation, canceled futures, social media and anxiety can lead a child to "detonate." Another spot compares kids' inner meltdowns and constantly being "plugged in" to overloaded circuits, while a third demonstrates how a child could perform a "disappearing act" as they detach from friends, family and school and ultimately, from their own head. All the spots, which were directed by Jakob Marky of Sweetshop, end with the tagline "The Kids Are Not Alright."