CDC shares promising data on teen mental health crisis

Over the past few years, young Americans have increasingly faced a mental health crisis that has been exacerbated by growing reliance on technology and world events like the COVID-19 pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been collecting data on adolescent mental health for the past three decades.

But this year’s findings show something more promising. The number of young people reporting constant feelings of sadness or hopelessness fell slightly between 2021 and 2023, from 42% to 40%.

“We are very encouraged when we see small but significant improvements in youth mental health here,” said Marci Hertz, senior adviser for school mental health at the CDC. “We’re seeing it actually moving in the right direction and that reflects the huge amount of work that parents, schools and our colleagues across the country have been doing.”

The rise and fall of the teen mental health crisis

Hertz said that as early as 2019, the CDC had expressed concerns about the mental health of young people, especially those in grades 9 to 12. Just one year later, the coronavirus pandemic struck, and as the CDC continues to track, it’s finding that mental health among young people has worsened even further.

Scott A. Roth, Psy.D., noticed this downward trend during his career as a school psychologist. As other newsworthy incidents become more common, teen mental health has become a topic of concern and may lead to more mental health diagnoses. To Dr. Ross, the downward trend found by the CDC signals a course correction.

“Between school violence, mass shootings and the pandemic, mental health has been in the spotlight. This has led to more people being aware of certain warnings [signs] and mental health treatment,” explains Dr. Ross. “Sometimes what I consider ‘normal stressors’ or ‘normal stress responses’ are pathologized out of concern that they may be a symptom of a more serious problem. This may lead to an increase in diagnosis and treatment.

We may have calmed down and stopped pathologizing normal responses to stress, but Hertz says there are other factors that may have contributed to the decline, such as providing mental health services to kids in need and working with schools to ensure students Feel a sense of belonging and connection.

“[Students] Instead of just feeling like, “I’m just a data point, I’m just a teacher’s standardized test score,” but they really feel like someone in the school building cares about them and they have a trustworthy adult when they have challenges, no matter what Whether you’re inside the school building or outside, you can talk to them,” Hertz said. “We have been working together to implement these strategies. So we hope that these strategies will work and move things in the right direction.

How race and gender affect mental health

While the number of students feeling sad or hopeless declined overall between 2021 and 2023, declines were also seen among women, blacks and Hispanics.

“We’re still in a period where women are more willing to seek help,” Dr. Ross explains. “This may come from their family, friends or professional help. Generally speaking, women may have a wider support system. This is a preventive factor. Male students may still be stuck in old gender stereotypes of masculinity and toughness. . I do see that changing, but probably not as quickly as I would like.

Dr Ross said mental health issues could also be particularly severe among transgender and non-binary students, often exacerbated by bullying and school violence.

reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness (down from 46% to 42%), poor mental health (down from 30% to 26%), or serious consideration of suicide (from 22% to 18%), the CDC report showed. .

Similar declines were seen in the number of black students who attempted suicide (from 14% to 10%) and the number who were injured in suicide attempts (from 4% to 2%).

There is more work to be done

While the data overall shows promise, the CDC identified several areas of concern, including bullying. The number of students who said they were bullied at school increased from 15% to 19%.

Dr Ross said bullying was a serious problem that could have serious physical and mental consequences and was only going to get worse as young people became more online.

“Without messaging, social media postings and online bullying fueling the fire, face-to-face conflict rarely happens,” Ross explains. “I also believe that reporting mechanisms and the legal consequences of schools not taking reports seriously have increased the number of ‘reportable’ incidents in schools. The anonymity of online communications has made interactions more frequent and brutal.

During the pandemic, when most teens were still participating in distance learning, the CDC saw a significant drop in the number of bullying incidents, Hertz said.

“What we’re seeing in 2023 is really a return to pre-pandemic levels,” Hertz said.

Inspiration for parents

The CDC continues to track this data to not only help inform decisions for young people in and out of school, but also to help parents and caregivers of teens. Hertz emphasized how important it is for parents to understand how to help their children maintain their mental health by maintaining open lines of communication with them and developing healthy habits at home.

“Listen to young people without judgment, do shared activities with your kids or teens, maybe even something like a family dinner,” Hertz said. “Another thing they can do is actually try to participate in their activities. , where they are, who they hang out with, whether it’s in person or online, doing all of these things is really protective for kids and reduces the likelihood that they will engage in all the risky behaviors that are harmful to them.

Dr. Ross agrees that parents play an important role in their children’s mental health, and it starts at a young age.

“As parents, once our children learn the language to express emotions, we have to communicate with them emotionally,” he said. “We don’t need to solve all the problems for our children, but rather teach them skills that will guide them in solving their own problems. We don’t want to raise a generation of kids who can’t cope.