A recently released study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows levels of sadness and hopelessness are improving in some US teenagers, and notably among girls.
However,, the survey and experts said, challenges remain, as some metrics worsened in the most recent report. Of particular concern is a growing group of students who missed school because they did not feel safe.
“I was pleased to see a little bit of improvement” in teenagers’ mental health, Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that works to reduce chronic absenteeism, told the Guardian. “I think schools heard the message that they needed to invest more in social-emotional support and in a sense of belonging.”
It was a message echoed by top officials at the CDC, that came with a caveat: “The data released today show improvements to a number of metrics that measure young people’s mental wellbeing – progress we can build on,” said Dr Debra Houry, CDC’s chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science, said in a release accompanying the data.
“However, this work is far from complete,” said Houry. “Every child should feel safe and supported, and CDC will continue its work to turn this data into action until we reach that goal.”
The new data is drawn from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior survey, an every-other-year report on sexual behavior, substance use, violent experiences and mental health among ninth-12th grade students. The survey measures these experiences across six demographics, including gender, sexual identity, race, ethnicity and grade, and began in 1990.
This report reflects data from 2023, and provides the survey’s first update since 2021. Then, in the teeth of the Covid-19 pandemic, experts saw a worrying deterioration in youth mental health that led the American Academy of Pediatrics to call for a national emergency declaration to address the crisis.
Shoots of hope emerged between 2021 and 2023, according to the data. The overall number of students who report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness has decreased from 42% to 40%. The number of female students who felt the same also decreased, from 57% to 53%.
Hispanic students also reported a drop in feelings of persistent sadness (down from 46% to 42%), lower rates of poor mental health (from 30% to 26%), and decreases in who seriously considered a suicide attempt (22% to 18%) and who made a suicide plan (19% to 16%). Black students were also significantly less likely to report a suicide attempt in this survey (from 14% to 10%), and fewer were injured in suicide attempts (from 4% to 2%).
Other challenges persist. The report continues to show disparities in youth mental health experienced by girls and LGBTQ+ students. Girls fare worse than male counterparts on nearly every measure of substance use, experiences of violence, mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. LGBTQ+ youth face similar disparities, with three in five experiencing persistent feelings of sadness of hopelessness.
Worrying, the survey also found worsening concerning trends in school safety. More students were bullied at school (15% to 19%) between 2021-2023, and more students missed school because of safety concerns (increasing from 9% to 13%). The percentage of students who were threatened or injured at school also increased (7% to 9%).
The percentage of girls and Asian American students who said they missed school because of safety was even more dramatic, respectively growing from 10% to 16% and doubling for Asian Americans, from 5% to 10%.
“I’m Chinese American, and personally I feel less safe in the United States than I did 10 years ago,” said Chang. “I’m not surprised that one of the groups that feels most nervous is Asian American kids.”
Chang continued: “When we’re in a world outside that blames people – blames people for the pandemic, says they’re a threat to the wellbeing of society – you worry both about how that plays out in schools. Schools are always, in part, a reflection of the world outside.”
