{"id":2271,"date":"2024-08-07T15:10:56","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T15:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthyretirementnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/07\/despite-some-gains-teens-especially-girls-are-still-struggling-with-their-mental-health-since-the-pandemic-report-shows\/"},"modified":"2024-08-07T15:10:56","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T15:10:56","slug":"despite-some-gains-teens-especially-girls-are-still-struggling-with-their-mental-health-since-the-pandemic-report-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthyretirementnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/07\/despite-some-gains-teens-especially-girls-are-still-struggling-with-their-mental-health-since-the-pandemic-report-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite some gains, teens \u2014 especially girls \u2014 are still struggling with their mental health since the pandemic, report shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Compared with a decade ago, teens, and especially girls, are more likely to say they feel persistently sad and hopeless and to think about or attempt suicide, according to a new report. Still, recent data suggest things might be improving slightly since the pandemic. <\/strong> <\/p>\n

The report, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which has been fielded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more than three decades as a way to measure the well-being of American high school students, found a two-point improvement in the percentage who said they experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness from 2021 to 2023, the most recent years measured by the survey. But overall, the outlook for teens is still pretty dark. <\/p>\n

In 2023, 40% of students who answered the survey said they experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. That metric was down from a high of 42% in 2021 but is still about 10 percentage points higher than it was a decade ago. <\/p>\n

In addition, 20% said they seriously considered suicide, up from 17% in 2013. Nine percent said they had attempted suicide; that\u2019s down from a high of 10% in 2021, but still higher than the 8% reported in 2013. <\/p>\n

The latest round of the survey was completed by more than 20,000 students in grades nine through 12 from a nationally representative sample of 155 schools. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe numbers are telling us that our youth are suffering, and we have a mental health crisis going on,\u201d said Dr. Jill Emanuele, vice president, Clinical Training at the Child Mind Institute in New York City.  She was not involved in the survey. <\/p>\n

When researchers separated the numbers by sex, the picture was very different. More than half of girls (53%) said they felt persistently sad or hopeless compared with 28% of boys. In 2013, those numbers were 39% for girls and 21% for boys. <\/p>\n

\u201cGirls are definitely struggling more,\u201d said Emanuele, who also noted that the differences between sexes may not actually be as wide as they seem. \u201cGirls are more verbal and vocal about some of their challenges, traditionally, boys are not as much, although I think that is changing.\u201d <\/p>\n

Researchers at the CDC said that while the recognized the severity of the issues, they were hopeful about recent improvements in some of the metrics measured in the survey. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not out of the woods by any stretch. We are still, I believe, experiencing a crisis in mental health among young people,\u201d said Dr. Kathleen Ethier, director of CDC\u2019s Division of Adolescent and School Health. \u201cBut when we look at the data from 2021 to 2023 we\u2019re starting to see these glimmers of hope.\u201d <\/p>\n

Some of the biggest improvements in persistent feelings of hopelessness over the past two years had been among multiracial, Asian and Hispanic students. <\/p>\n

And Ethier said she was happy to see that the number of Black students who reported attempting suicide in the past two years had gone down. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2021, the percent of students who said they attempted suicide among Black youth was also coinciding with some really disturbing data around mortality to suicide among young people of color, and so we\u2019re hopeful that in seeing that fewer Black youth are attempting suicide, that hopefully we\u2019ll also see the same similar decreases in mortality,\u201d Ethier said. <\/p>\n

Even as there were slight improvements, the survey showed some groups are suffering more than others. About half of kids who identify as gay, bisexual, transgender and queer said they experienced poor mental health in the last month, and this group was far more likely to report suicide attempts and experience violence. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still seeing really substantial disparities for LGBTQ+ youth in experience of violence and poor mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors that remains a huge concern for us,\u201d Ethier said. <\/p>\n

Emanuele said the numbers for LGBTQ+ kids were not a surprise, but they were disheartening to see. <\/p>\n

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