Teen mental health has improved somewhat as the Covid-19 pandemic has subsided, a new federal study says, but experts on Long Island point out it remains a major problem, caused in part by addiction to cell phones and social media.
The number of teens reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness fell slightly between 2021 and 2023, from 42% to 40%, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released last week. Among girls, the percentage fell from 57% to 53%, while the number of girls who seriously considered suicide fell from 30% to 27%.
Mental health experts on Long Island said those numbers provide cause for cautious optimism, but stressed that depression, anxiety and other problems remain widespread among teens.
“While there are improvements in some mental health indicators among adolescents, it is important to note how dramatic the ongoing mental health crisis is,” said Dr. Victor Fornari, vice chair of child and adolescent psychiatry at Northwell Health.
WHAT TO KNOW
- Some indicators show that mental health among teenagers has improved nationwide in recent years, according to a new study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (CDC).
- Experts on Long Island say While this is good news, mental health problems among teenagers are still widespread and much more needs to be done to address them.
- The study found that persistent Sadness or hopelessness among adolescents decreased from 42% to 40% between 2021 and 2023. The percentage in 2013 was 30%.
“It is important to note how dramatic the ongoing mental health crisis is,” said Dr. Victor Fornari, vice chair of child and adolescent psychiatry at Northwell Health. Photo credit: Newsday / Alejandra Villa Loarca
It found that four in 10 teens in 2023 reported persistent sadness or hopelessness, meaning they felt so despondent for at least two weeks that they stopped their usual activities. About 20% seriously considered suicide, 16% made a suicide plan and 9% attempted suicide, the report said.
And while the number of teens reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness fell to 40% in 2023, down from 30% a decade earlier.
Dr. Adria Gerber, a licensed clinical psychologist at Stony Brook Medicine, said that while “there have been some improvements… the numbers are staggering.”
While the report did not include figures on teen suicides, according to the CDC, suicide is now the second leading cause of death among 10- to 34-year-olds in the United States, after unintentional injuries.
Cautious optimism regarding new figures
CDC officials said the latest report gives them cause for hope.
“One of our top priorities at CDC is improving the mental health of Americans,” said Dr. Debra Houry, CDC’s chief medical officer and deputy director for programs and science, in a statement. The report shows “improvements in a number of metrics that measure young people’s mental well-being – progress we can build on. But this work is far from complete.”
The report also found some improvements among minority teenagers.
The proportion of Hispanics who felt consistently sad or hopeless fell from 46% to 42%. The proportion of Hispanic students who seriously considered attempting suicide fell from 22% to 18%, while the proportion who made a suicide plan fell from 19% to 16%.
Among black students, the number of suicide attempts fell from 14% to 10% and the number of people injured during a suicide attempt fell from 4% to 2%.
Among LGBT+ students, the study found worrying trends: in 2023, almost three in ten were bullied at school and two in ten attempted suicide.
Some local experts attributed the small improvements to the country having passed the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and returned to some normalcy. The CDC study was based on data from the 2021 and 2023 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The pandemic broke out in the United States in March 2020.
“Some of that may come out on the other side of the pandemic,” Fornari said. “We know that the COVID pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in mental health issues among adolescents” as they have had to stay home and participate in distance learning for months.
Christopher Coluccio of Blue Point, whose 14-year-old son, also named Christopher, died by suicide in 2021, agreed.
“I worry that while it’s a good number, some of it is just off the mark with people’s COVID situation and we’re just getting back to the real numbers,” said Coluccio, who now runs a foundation to combat suicide.
Others said the improvements may be due to more people seeking mental health services as the stigma associated with the problem slowly fades.
“The one good thing about COVID is that we’ve focused very specifically on people’s mental health because we’ve seen it deteriorate so quickly,” said Jeffrey Friedman, CEO of the nonprofit CN Guidance & Counseling Services in Hicksville.
“We’re seeing more people using these services, and when more people use these services and get into treatment, fewer people experience sadness or hopelessness and their overall mental health improves,” he said.
His agency has seen a 20% increase in the number of young people receiving mental health help since 2022, he said.
Gerber, who works in the outpatient child and adolescent psychiatry department at Stony Brook University Hospital, said the clinic was inundated with requests for help in the early years of the pandemic, with a 200% increase between 2020 and 2022. Social isolation due to the pandemic is leading to widespread depression, anxiety and other problems, she said.
“We had a huge increase in call volume that we couldn’t handle,” she said.
Demand for services is still high, she said, but has fallen to a more manageable level.
Access to mental health counseling has improved in part because of another consequence of the pandemic — “telehealth,” or counseling sessions via Zoom or other programs. Now teens don’t have to rely on their parents to drive them to a therapist’s office, she said.
Not all local experts believe that teenagers’ mental health has improved.
Kathy Rivera, director of the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, said, “Depression and anxiety are common, especially among Hispanic girls.” Photo credit: Newsday / J. Conrad Williams Jr.
“Depression and anxiety are widespread, especially among Hispanic girls,” said Kathy Rivera, executive director and CEO of the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center in Nassau County. Her agency has “not seen a reduction in the overall need for our vital child mental health programs.”
Claudia Boyle, executive director of the Hispanic Counseling Center of Hempstead and Bay Shore, said that while things may have improved for Hispanics across the country, “that’s not the case … in Nassau and in Suffolk. I don’t think it’s getting worse.”
Her agency is receiving more and more calls for help, often involving self-harm, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts and other issues. Even this summer – a time of year when requests usually drop – the number of calls has remained steady.
“The children hardly have any coping strategies,” she said. “It’s just a different world.”
Social media and mental health
Many experts attribute some of the ongoing mental health problems to the proliferation of mobile phones and social media over the past decade.
US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an extraordinary public warning in 2023 that social media poses a threat to young people’s mental health. In June, he called for warning labels on the platforms, like those required on cigarette packets. Teens who spend more than three hours a day on social media are twice as likely to develop symptoms of anxiety and depression, he said.
Cell phones, says Northwell’s Fornari, play a central role in the mental health crisis “because we have a handheld computer in our hands that has access to the internet and social media. Teens are being targeted and bullied on social media in ways we can’t even imagine. It’s not just being called names in the cafeteria or in the hallway. It can really be quite toxic and hurtful.”
Rivera agreed, saying that many teenagers even turn to the Internet for inappropriate help with mental health issues.
“The dangers of social media have only increased over time,” she said. “Many young people, particularly teenagers, are turning to online platforms for self-diagnosis and treatment or using unregulated mental health apps to satisfy their need for social connection. While these may provide temporary relief, they do not address underlying issues that may worsen at a later date.”
Still, some experts hope the numbers cited by the CDC will continue to improve, saying the growing number of famous people speaking openly about their mental health issues can help break the stigma surrounding the issue.
Simone Biles, considered the greatest gymnast of all time, has spoken openly about her mental health struggles – and how therapy has helped her. After missing five finals at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, she returned to the Paris Games this summer – winning three gold medals and one silver.
“She’s phenomenal,” Gerber said. “It’s just incredible to see the turnaround and her performance. I think she just brought this understanding to the stage that she’s human. She showed that if you admit what’s going on, there’s a community that will help you. They can help you be the best you can be.”
