Study: 3 in 5 teenage girls persistently sad in 2021
Nearly 3 in 5 teenage girls felt persistent sadness in 2021, double the rate of boys, and 1 in 3 girls seriously considered attempting suicide, according to data released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The findings, based on surveys given to teenagers across the country, also showed high levels of violence, depression and suicidal thoughts among lesbian, gay and bisexual youth. More than 1 in 5 of these students reported attempting suicide in the year before the survey, the agency found.
The rates of sadness are the highest reported in a decade, reflecting a long-brewing national tragedy only made worse by the isolation and stress of the pandemic.
“I think there’s really no question what this data is telling us,” said Dr. Kathleen Ethier, head of the CDC’s Adolescent and School Health Program. “Young people are telling us that they are in crisis.”
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey was given to 17,000 adolescents at high schools across the United States in the fall of 2021. The survey is conducted every two years, and the rates of mental health problems have gone up with every report since 2011, Ethier said.
“There was a mental health crisis before the pandemic — it just didn’t catch everyone’s attention the way it does now,” said Dr. Cori Green, the director of behavioral health education and integration in pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.
Still, Green said that she is seeing more of her young patients test positive on screenings for depression. “The pandemic led to more social isolation — a risk factor for depression,” she said.
She also pointed out that depression symptoms sometimes manifest differently in boys and girls, which might not be fully reflected in the survey. Although girls with depression often have persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, which the survey asked about, boys with depression often exhibit irritability or aggression, she said.
On a handful of topics, the survey results suggested teenagers were doing better than in previous years. They reported lower rates of illicit drug use and bullying at school, for example. And teenagers are having less sex, with fewer sexual partners, than in previous years.
But about 57% of girls and 69% of gay, lesbian or bisexual teenagers reported feeling sadness every day for at least two weeks during the previous year. And 14% of girls, up from 12% in 2011, said they had been forced to have sex at some point in their lives, as did 20% of gay, lesbian or bisexual adolescents.
“When we’re looking at experiences of violence, girls are experiencing almost every type of violence more than boys,” said Ethier of the CDC. Researchers should be studying not only the increase in reports of violence, she said, but also its causes: “We need to talk about what’s happening with teenage boys that might be leading them to perpetrate sexual violence.”
The researchers also analyzed the data by race and ethnicity, finding that Black and Hispanic students were more likely to report skipping school because of concerns about violence. White students, however, were more likely to report experiencing sexual violence.
The increase in sadness and hopelessness was reported across all racial groups over the past decade. Although Black students were less likely to report these negative feelings than other groups, they were more likely to report suicide attempts than white, Asian or Hispanic adolescents.
The 2021 survey asked about students’ sexual orientation but did not ask about their gender identity, so data on risk factors for transgender students is not available.
More girls than boys reported being cyber-bullied, according to the CDC report, which found 1 in 5 girls said they had been the target of electronic bullying, almost double the 11% of boys.