CDC teen mental health survey reveals slight improvement
Young people are faring better in their mental health in the past few years after a period of increased sadness and hopelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic, a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.
The data released last week showed a 2% decrease from 2021 to 2023 in high school students reporting they felt sad or hopeless. The total dropped from 42% to 40% of students who reported having these feelings, marking the first time the annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey didn’t report an increase in over a decade.
But mental and behavioral health experts aren’t celebrating a victory just yet. This is because reported rates of kids feeling sad or hopeless remain high, especially teenage girls who showed a decrease, from 57% to 53% cases, over those two years.
“We’ve made some progress tackling these issues in recent years, which proves that they are not insurmountable,” said Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC’s adolescent and school health division. “However, there’s still much work ahead.”
What’s getting better
The new report also found small but meaningful improvements among students in marginalized groups.
Four percent fewer Hispanic teens over those two years felt persistently sad or hopeless, experienced poor mental health and seriously considered attempting suicide, and 3% fewer made a suicide plan.
Black teens also saw a 4% decrease in students who reported they’d attempted suicide and a 2% decrease in people injured in a suicide attempt.
Ariana Hoet, a pediatric psychologist and executive clinical director of The Kids Mental Health Foundation, said increased awareness, government funding and school programs can partially explain why youth mental health has improved over the past few years.
“The pandemic opened our eyes (to the fact) that children’s mental health was a concern,” she said. “People are looking for resources and accessing resources more frequently.”
There has also been a concerted effort to highlight the causes of despair in young adults.
Last year, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a health advisory that highlighted the impact of social media on young people’s mental health. The White House also awarded hundreds of millions of dollars to mental and behavioral health care programs in schools and at-risk communities.
Dr. Elizabeth Ortiz-Schwartz, a child psychiatrist at Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut, said the return to in-class learning and extracurricular activities may have also helped improve students’ mental health.
“There’s more opportunities to integrate (and) socialize with peers,” she said. “The normalization of activities was probably very helpful.”
What’s getting worse
Returning to classrooms also meant going back to stressors like academic pressure, bullying and in-school violence, Ortiz-Schwartz said.
The CDC report found increases in students being threatened or injured with a weapon at school, being bullied at school or missing school due to safety concerns at school or en route to school.
The percentage of female students who missed school increased from 10% to 16% in those two years, and nearly 20% of females experienced sexual violence in 2023, according to the survey. Almost 30% of LGBTQ+ students said they were bullied and 20% missed school due to safety concerns.
The rise in violence may be a natural consequence of returning to in-person classes where there are more opportunities for physical encounters, experts said. But they said there may be more at play.
Ortiz-Schwartz has noticed that some of her patients after quarantine seemed developmentally stunted, exhibiting social-emotional behaviors she normally sees in younger kids.
The increase in violence and bullying in the data may also be a product of social media normalizing aggressive language and behaviors, leading to less self-censoring and more bullying when kids are together in person.
Another area that adults should note, said Hoet, from The Kids Mental Health Foundation, is how the behavior manifests itself so they can teach teens to cope.
“Children tend to show depression with irritability,” Hoet said. “We have to teach emotional regulation… being angry is okay, being angry is normal but we have to find a way to cope with that anger.”
Parents protecting mental health
Not all students were hard hit by COVID-19.
A report published by the Springtide Research Institute in July found that 13-year-olds had positive outcomes during the pandemic. Out of the 1,000 kids surveyed, nearly 50% said the COVID-19 pandemic had a positive impact on their family relationships.
While the results appear hopeful, researchers noted that the survey answers heavily varied based on a teen’s household income. Among kids with an above-average household income, 64% said the pandemic had a positive impact on family relationships. However, only 34% of kids with a below-average household income experienced a positive impact on their family relations.
“Some kids probably loved (staying at home) and really thrived and then some kids didn’t and it’s because each environment is different,” Hoet said.
The report emphasizes that students have unique needs, said Dr. Laura Erickson-Schroth, chief medical officer at The Jed Foundation, a nonprofit focused on emotional health and suicide prevention for teens and young adults.
“We really need to pay attention to the reasons why young people are in the situations (and) the reasons why young people are having trouble seeking out help when they need it,” she said.
Educators should continue to improve on programs and curriculum at school, however, the best protector of mental health is child-adult relationships and that starts at home with parents and guardians, Hoet said.
The CDC also says increasing health education, connecting young people to health services and making school environments safer and more supportive are key to improving mental health.
“This work is far from complete,” said Dr. Debra Houry, CDC’s chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science “Every child should feel safe and supported, and CDC will continue its work to turn this data into action until we reach that goal.”
Adrianna Rodriguez can be reached at [email protected].
link
