A recently released study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that levels of sadness and despair are improving among American teenagers, especially girls.
But research and experts say challenges remain, with some indicators worsening in the latest report – particularly worrying about an increase in students missing school because they feel unsafe.
“We were pleased to see some improvement in teenagers' mental health,” Hedy Chan, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that works to reduce chronic absenteeism, told The Guardian. “I think schools got the message that they need to invest more in social-emotional support and a sense of belonging.”
It was a message echoed by CDC leaders, but with a caveat: “The data released today show improvements in many measures of youth mental health that we can move forward with,” Dr. Debra Hooley, CDC's chief medical officer and deputy director for programs and science, said in a statement accompanying the data.
“But this work is far from done,” Holley said. “Every child should feel safe and supported, and CDC will continue to work to translate this data into action until we reach that goal.”
The new data was drawn from the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a biennial report on the sexual behavior, substance use, violence experiences, and mental health of students in grades 9 through 12. The survey, which began in 1990, measures these experiences across six demographics, including gender, sexual identity, race, ethnicity, and grade level.
The report reflects data for 2023 and marks the first update of the survey since 2021. Then, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts saw an alarming deterioration in young people's mental health, leading the American Academy of Pediatrics to call for a national emergency declaration to address the crisis.
The data showed some hopeful signs between 2021 and 2023. The overall number of students reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness dropped from 42% to 40%. The number of female students reporting the same feelings also dropped from 57% to 53%.
Hispanic students also reported fewer persistent feelings of sadness (46% to 42%), lower rates of poor mental health (30% to 26%), and fewer who seriously considered suicide (22% to 18%) or made a suicide plan (19% to 16%).Black students were also significantly less likely to report a suicide attempt in this study (14% to 10%) and were less likely to have been injured during the attempt (4% to 2%).
Other challenges remain. The report continues to show youth mental health disparities experienced by girls and LGBTQ+ students. Girls fare worse than boys across nearly every indicator of substance use, experiences of violence, mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. LGBTQ+ youth face similar disparities, with three in five reporting chronic feelings of hopelessness or sadness.
Worryingly, the survey also found that trends around school safety are worsening: more students were bullied at school between 2021 and 2023 (from 15% to 19%), more students missed school due to safety concerns (up from 9% to 13%), and the proportion of students who had been threatened or injured at school also increased (from 7% to 9%).
The percentage of girls and Asian American students who said they missed school for safety reasons was even more dramatic, increasing from 10% to 16%, respectively, and doubling for Asian American students, from 5% to 10%.
“I'm Chinese American, and I personally feel less safe in the United States than I did 10 years ago,” Chang said. “It's no surprise that one of the groups feeling most insecure is Asian American children.”
Chan continued: “The outside world is blaming humans for the pandemic and saying humans are a threat to society's well-being, so you're going to worry about how that plays out in schools. Schools are always going to be a reflection of the outside world in some ways.”
