In other words: There are large, consistent, and alarming trends for girls in the USA and the UK (as well as in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). The suicide rate for teen boys in the UK is not rising (although for older men, it is falling).

The suicide rate for teen boys in the USA is up substantially, but it is not out of line with the increasing rates for older men. There is less evidence of an increase in deliberate self-harm (such as non-lethal cutting) for boys in the USA or UK. There is a smaller increase in the suicide rate for teen girls in the UK (up 'only' 30%)įor boys, there is evidence of increases in depression and anxiety as well, although the overall rates are lower and the increases are less consistent across studies, compared to girls. (The Google doc also includes evidence of all three trends for Canadian girls, and evidence of rising anxiety and depression in adolescent girls in Australia and New Zealand.) There is also a large increase in the suicide rate for teen girls in the USA (up 77% for older teen girls up 151% for younger teens, when you compare 2017 to the average of 2000-2009).

By early 2020 ( just before COVID), there was widespread agreement that the rise is real there has indeed been a large increase in rates of anxiety, depression, and self harm among Gen Z girls in the USA and in the UK. Hardly anyone challenged the claim in the Google doc after we posted it in Feb. If you are a researcher, please request access to the doc and add your comments. Please see this Google Doc, where Jon has laid out the various kinds of evidence, along with critiques from skeptics. But some skeptics claimed that self-report measures (of depression and anxiety) are unreliable, and that the suicide statistics are more complicated than it seems from our Figure 7.2. The first Google docis on the basic stats on teen mental health (described below) the second Google doc is on whether social media is a major contributor to the rise (begin at our page on Better Social Media).ġ) Is there a mental health crisis among American and British teenagers? In chapter 7 we asserted that there is, and we showed graphs of rising depression and suicide rates for American teens. Jon is curating two open-source literature reviews on two claims that we made in the book for which there was not full agreement among researchers at the time. How to improve mental health using ideas from the bookįirst, let's dig deeper into the data, deeper than we went in chapter 7 of the book (the chapter titled 'Anxiety and Depression').

The coddling of america