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The first signs of a problem began to appear around 2014: more young people reported feeling overwhelmed and depressed. University counseling centers have reported a sharp increase in the number of students seeking treatment for mental health issues.
Even as studies have shown an increase in adolescent depression and suicide symptoms since 2010, some researchers have described troubling concerns and claimed that there simply was not enough reliable data to reach this conclusion.
The idea that there is an epidemic of anxiety or depression among young people is "just a myth," psychiatrist Richard Friedman wrote in The New York Times last year. Others suggested that young people were simply more willing to get help when they needed it. Or perhaps the outreach efforts of the counseling centers were becoming more effective.
But a new badysis of a large representative survey reinforces what I – and others – say: the epidemic is all too real. In fact, the increase in the number of mental health problems among adolescents and young adults is quite astounding.
An epidemic of anxiety
One of the best ways to find out if mental health problems have increased is to talk to a representative sample of the general population, not just to those seeking help. This is exactly what the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, administered by the US Department of Health and Social Services, does.
He interviewed more than 600,000 Americans. Recent trends are surprising.
From 2009 to 2017, major depression among 20 to 21 year olds more than doubled from 7% to 15%. Depression increased by 69% among 16-17 year olds. Serious psychological distress, which includes feelings of anxiety and hopelessness, increased by 71% between 2008 and 2017 among 18-25 year olds. Twenty-two to twenty-three years ago attempted suicide in 2017 compared to 2008, and another 55 percent had suicidal thoughts. Increases were more pronounced for girls and young women. In 2017, one in five girls aged 12-17 had a major depression the previous year.
Is it possible that young people simply became more willing to admit their mental health problems? My co-authors and I have tried to examine this possibility by badyzing the data on actual suicide rates collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide is a behavior, so changes in suicide rates can not be caused by a greater willingness to admit problems.
Tragically, suicide has also increased during this period. For example, the suicide rate among 18-19 year olds increased by 56% between 2008 and 2017. Other behaviors related to depression also increased, including admissions in emergency services for self-injury , such as cuts, as well as admissions to the hospital. for suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts.
The sharp increase in mental health problems found in the National Survey of Drug Use and Health emerged almost exclusively among adolescents and young adults, and less so among Americans aged 26 and older. Even after statistically controlling the influences of age and year, we found that depression, distress, and suicidal ideation were much more common among those born in the mid-to-late years. 90, the generation that I'm calling iGen.
The mental health crisis seems to be a generational problem and not something that affects Americans of all ages. And this, more than anything else, could help researchers understand why this is happening.
The change of social life
It is always difficult to determine the causes of trends, but some possibilities seem less likely than others.
A struggling economy and a job loss, two typical culprits of mental stress, do not seem to be to blame. This is because US economic growth has been strong and the unemployment rate has dropped significantly from 2011 to 2017, the year when mental health problems increased the most.
Academic pressure is unlikely to be the cause, as iGen's teens spent less time on homework than the teens of the 1990s.
Although mental health problems worsened at about the same time as the opioid epidemic, this crisis seemed to affect almost exclusively adults over 25 years of age.
However, over the past decade, social change has impacted the lives of teens and young adults more than any other generation: the spread of smartphones and digital media such as social media, SMS and games.
While older people also use these technologies, the younger ones adopt them faster and more completely and the impact on their social life is more pronounced. In fact, it has radically restructured their daily lives.
Compared to their predecessors, today's teens spend less time in person with their friends and more time communicating electronically, which has been found, study by study, as a health problem mental.
Whatever the cause, the rise in mental health problems among adolescents and young adults deserves special attention and not a reference to myth. More and more young sufferers – among them more suicide attempts and more suicide, Young Americans can no longer be ignored.
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