Finally, Some Promising News on the Youth Mental Health Crisis—According to the CDC
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New data shows there have been decreases in the number of young people feeling sad or hopeless.
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Fact checked by Sarah ScottFact checked by Sarah ScottOver the past several years, American youth have been increasingly facing a mental health crisis which has only been exacerbated by a growing dependence on technology and world events like the COVID-19 pandemic. For the past three decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been collecting data about the state of youth mental health.But this year’s findings show something more promising. Between 2021 and 2023, there's been a slight decrease in the number of young people who say they experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness from 42% to 40%.“We were really encouraged when we saw a small but significant increase in improvement in youth mental health here,” says Marci Hertz, the senior advisor for school mental health at the CDC. “We saw it actually moving in the correct direction, reflecting a host of work that parents and schools and our colleagues across the country have been doing.”The Rise and Fall of The Youth Mental Health CrisisBack in 2019, Hertz says the CDC was already concerned about the reported mental well-being of young people, particularly teens in grades 9-12. Just a year later, the COVID pandemic happened, and the CDC continued to see further deterioration in the mental health of young people as they continued to track it. That downward trend is something Scott A. Roth, PsyD, has noticed in his own career as a school psychologist. With other newsworthy events becoming more prevalent, the mental health of teens has been a topic thrust into the spotlight and may have led to more mental health diagnoses. For Dr. Roth, that downward trend found by the CDC signals a course correction. “Between school violence and mass shootings and the pandemic, mental health has been in the spotlight. This has led to more people being aware of certain warning [signs] and mental health treatments,” Dr. Roth explains. “There are sometimes where what I would consider ‘normal stressors’ or ‘normal stress reactions’ are pathologized because of fear it could be a sign of something more serious. This may have led to an increase in diagnosis and treatment.”We might have cooled off a bit on pathologizing normal reactions to stress, but Hertz says there are also other factors that may have contributed to the decrease, like providing access to mental health services to kids in need and working with schools to ensure students feel a sense of belonging and connectedness. “[Students] don't just feel like 'I'm just a data point, I'm just a standardized test score to the faculty,' but they really feel like people at the school building care about them, and they have a trusted adult that they can talk to when they encounter challenges, either inside or outside the school building,” says Hertz. “We've been making a concerted effort to implement those kinds of strategies. So it is our hope that those strategies have played a role in moving the needle in the right direction.”How Race and Gender Impact Mental HealthWhile the decrease in students feeling sad or hopeless overall fell between 2021-2023, that decrease was also seen amongst the female, as well as the Black and Hispanic subgroups.“We are still in a period where females are more comfortable asking for help,” Dr. Roth explains. “This could be help from their families, friends, or professionals. In general, females may have a broader support system. This is a preventative factor. Male students may still be stuck in older gender stereotypes of masculinity and toughness. I do see this changing but perhaps not as quickly as I would like.”Mental health struggles can also be particularly profound amongst trans and non-binary students, Dr. Roth says, often compounded by bullying and school violence. The CDC's report showed incremental decreases in the number of Hispanic students who said they felt persistently sad or hopeless (from 46% to 42%), who experienced poor mental health (from 30% to 26%), or who seriously considered suicide (from 22% to 18%).There were similar decreases in the number of Black students who attempted suicide (from 14% to 10%) and those who were injured in a suicide attempt (from 4% to 2%).There is More Work To Be DoneDespite the data showing promise overall, there were several noted areas of concern the CDC found, including bullying. The number of students who say they were bullied at school increased from 15% to 19%.Bullying is a serious issue that can have severe effects, both physically and mentally, and has only gotten worse as young people have become more online, Dr. Roth says. “Face-to-face conflict rarely happens without messaging, social media posting, and cyberbullying fueling the flame,” Roth explains. “I also believe the reporting mechanisms and the legal repercussions of schools not taking reports seriously have increased 'reportable' incidents in schools. Perceived anonymity in online communication allows for more frequent and more cruel interactions.”During the pandemic, when most teens were still participating in remote learning, Hertz says the CDC saw the numbers on bullying fall significantly. “What we saw in 2023 was really increasing back to the levels that it had been prior to the pandemic,” Hertz says. The Takeaway For ParentsThe CDC continues to track this data to not only help inform decisions regarding young people in schools and beyond but also to help parents and caregivers of adolescents and teens. Hertz emphasizes how important it is for parents to understand how they can help their children with their mental well-being by keeping open lines of communication with their children and practicing healthy habits at home. “Things like listening, nonjudgmentally, to what their young person has to say, doing shared activities with their child or adolescent, and that can even be something like having family dinners together,” Hertz says. “The other thing that they can do is really try to stay engaged with their activities, where they are, who they're hanging out with, in person and online, and doing all those things really has a protective effect for kids, and decreases the likelihood that they'll engage in all those kinds of risk behaviors that can be detrimental to them.”Dr. Roth agrees that parents play an important part in their children’s mental health, and it starts at a very young age. “As parents, we must engage with our children on emotions as soon as they develop the language to express them,” he says. “We need not solve every problem for our children but teach them the skills to guide them to solve their own problems. We do not want to create a generation of children that cannot cope.” For more Parents news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on Parents.
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