Despite some gains, teens — especially girls — are still struggling with their mental health since the pandemic, report shows

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 restrictions children this age faced during the pandemic.

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. 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. 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. In addition, 20% said they seriously considered suicide, up from 17% in 2013. Nine percent said they had attempted suicide; that’s down from a high of 10% in 2021, but still higher than the 8% reported in 2013. 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. “The numbers are telling us that our youth are suffering, and we have a mental health crisis going on,” said Dr. Jill Emanuele, vice president, Clinical Training at the Child Mind Institute in New York City.  She was not involved in the survey.