Health Hotline Magazine | August 2023

Health Tw ns

Mental in T ns

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Helping Our Kids Thrive in a Time of Uncertainty By Lindsay Wilson

Full disclosure: I am a mom of a tween girl, so this topic is close to my heart. The research was distressing to read, because frankly, the mental state of tweens and teens in this country is bleak. School shootings, climate anxiety, and the pressures of social media, on top of the normal social and academic anxiety that tweens and teens experience is all too much. The statistics speak for themselves: Recently published data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 22 percent of high school students said they had seriously considered suicide in the past year and 10 percent said they had attempted suicide at least once. All demographic groups across race, ethnicity, and gender experienced increases in suicide risk since the CDC first started collecting this data in 2011, but certain groups faced greater risk than others. The report shows that nearly 3 in 5 (57%) U.S. teen girls felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021—double that of boys and a 60 percent increase from 2011. Among teen girls, nearly 1 in 3 (30%) seriously considered attempting suicide—up nearly 60 percent from a decade ago. The report also found more than half (52%) of LGBTQ students had recently experienced poor mental health and more than 1 in 5 (22%) attempted suicide in the past year. African American students were

also more likely to attempt suicide than their Asian American, Latino, or white peers while Native American students had the highest rates of “suicidality” (suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts). Overall, nearly 30 percent reported that their mental health was “most of the time or always not good.”

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