This week's article summary is The Good News About the Youth Mental Health Crisis.
Particularly after the Covid pandemic, the mental health crisis in youths around the world has been in the spotlight.
While adolescence--at least since the 1950s when the idea of teen culture began--has included inevitable angst and self-doubt, the world today seems more dangerous and unpredictable. It used to be a given that the next generation in America would aspire and often achieve a higher quality of life than the previous one — especially when it came to material things like houses, cars, etc. The belief in continuous progress and increasing wealth is gone.
With more competition, not just from other people but from AI too, internal and external pressure to be perfect and excel in all things all the time, anxiety about the future, more online than in-person time, and politicians/social media influencers who often spew hateful, polarizing messages, the world today is more troubling than in previous generations.
All this uncertainty has had an adverse effect on today’s youth: anxiety, loneliness, depression.
Although many of us believe that teens are heading toward even deeper, darker abyss of emotional turmoil, the article below is a hopeful sign that adolescents in the aggregate may be starting to feel better about themselves and their future.
Part of the reason is that we adults, especially parents and teachers, have been more attuned to their needs and are more sensitive to their psychological well-being. For example, many of the schools our alums matriculate to have gone lighter on homework and overall academic workload.
Part of it also may be that kids today recognize that to change the world for the better, they need to take more initiative and not entrust the older generation to shape the future. Think of the recent New York City mayoral election which was dramatically impacted by young voters.
Clearly the crisis isn’t over, and kids of all ages need our attention, empathy, compassion, and guidance; yet I am glad to see that that the data is moving in a positive direction regarding adolescent mental health.
Joe
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If there’s one settled fact about life online, it’s that negativity gets more attention than positivity. As one study of more than 100,000 headlines found, negative stories receive far more interest than positive ones.
Which is why you probably haven’t yet heard the good news about the youth mental health crisis.
The youth mental health crisis is real. The fact that young people have been struggling emotionally has earned extensive coverage for at least a half-decade, with good reason. Rates of anxiety and depression shot up among youth over the last several years. Horrifyingly, the suicide rate for 10- to 24-year-olds jumped 62 percent from 2007 to 2021.
The numbers were so alarming that in 2021 the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association jointly declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health. That same year the U.S. Surgeon General issued a youth mental health advisory.
This wasn’t media overreaction. Young people really have been struggling mightily. But amid this tornado of alarming news, and with the internet’s baseline preference for negativity, it’s easy for glimmers of hope to get lost.
Which is why most of us haven’t yet heard that the youth mental health crisis is showing signs of improvement.
That’s the message of a recent article in Greater Good Magazine by Anya Kamenetz. When it comes to young people’s mental health, “things have been looking up in many ways,” Kamenetz writes. “And while there are certainly still disparities and major gaps to be addressed, the incipient positive turn in youth well-being is not receiving the same amount of attention as the negative trendlines before it.”
What are these underreported green shoots of good news?
Kamenetz mentions several:
- Data shows a two-year uptick in college students who are flourishing for the first time since 2012.
- Other sources indicate a small decrease in reported loneliness and anxiety among young people.
- Numbers from Health’s Youth Mental Health Tracker showed four-in-five reported being satisfied with life, happy, and feeling that what they do in life is meaningful in 2024.
- In July 2024 94 percent of 10- to 18-year-olds told Gallup that they felt happiness “a lot” the previous day.
- The National Institutes of Health reported an unprecedented trend in the reduction of illicit substance use among teenagers in 2024.
Taken together, all these data points paint a picture of young people who, while still worried about their future and the world’s many problems, are feeling slightly better overall.
The data suggest something real has shifted. But at this early stage it’s not entirely clear what that is. Covid and all its attendant traumas slowly receding into the rearview mirror certainly can’t hurt. Kamenetz also suggests that the attention on youth mental health may have driven resources and funding towards the problem.
Whatever the causes, these hopeful signs are encouraging. But that doesn’t mean we should declare “job done” and pop the champagne.
There is still a lot of suffering out there, particularly among LGBTQ+, minority, and economically disadvantaged youth, Kamenetz stresses. We have a long way to go to help everyone who needs support. But it is important to notice success so we can build on them.
There is another reason to notice and applaud signs that a turnaround in youth mental health is underway. All the recent doom and gloom on the subject in itself might be contributing to young people’s mental health issues.
Northwestern University psychology professors Vijay Mittal and Renee Engeln recently argued in theWall Street Journal that the attention given to the youth mental health crisis may be accidentally making it worse.
“The growing focus on students’ anxiety and depression, while well-intentioned, may be making psychological distress seem inevitable. Instead of fostering a supportive community for adolescent and young-adult students with mental-health concerns, we may be reinforcing a false and destructive belief that misery is universal among young people,” they warn.
Panicked headlines about sad teenagers may have inadvertently conveyed the message that, if you are a thoughtful, aware, kind kid, you will also inevitably be a miserable one. That messaging could nudge young people to over focus and even pathologize negative emotions that are a normal part of human life.
“Emotions are contagious. When students internalize the idea that suffering is the norm, that norm—even when inaccurate—can foster a culture of misery,” the psychologists worry.
Raising the alarm about suffering young people was the right thing to do. You need to know about a problem in order to solve it. But given what attracts most eyeballs in the media, it’s important to trumpet positive developments too.
For one, we all need more positivity (and factual accuracy) in our lives. Plus, good news is energizing. If you see that your efforts are having an impact, you’ll likely be driven to work even harder. Finally, negativity can become a self-reinforcing cycle.
Teens who think being young means guaranteed mental health woes are more vulnerable to suffering. Thankfully, that’s not what the latest data says.
Yes, the kids have been going through a very rocky patch. But evidence suggests things are starting to look a little more positive for youth mental health. Serious psychological suffering need not be an inevitable part of being young.
