Teen Girls Are In Trouble

 

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and, boy, do we really need to “take some time to look around, look within” in 2023.

According to Mental Health America, approximately 50 million adults living in the United States (roughly 20%) have a diagnosable mental health condition. Over the course of a lifetime, 46 percent of Americans will someday meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental health condition, and about half will develop conditions by the age of 14.

Americans who identify as Black/African American, Latinx/Hispanic, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Native American/Alaska Native, and multiracial all have higher risks for developing mental health problems in their lifetimes. The nearly 15 million Americans who self-identify as LGBTQ+ are especially at high risk, with 39% reported to have experienced a mental illness in the past year.

But no one is immune from developing anxiety and major depression — two of the most common mental health disorders in America — or post-tramautic stress disorder (12 million American adults and probably too many children, too), addiction/substance use disorder (19 million adults, 1 million children 12-17 years old), and suicidal thoughts (11.4 million adults in any given year).

You may have read the stunning headline last month that 30% of teen girls in the U.S. — about 1 in 3 —  seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021.

Please stop and read that last, awful sentence again. According to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 3 teenage girls in the U.S. were in such distress psychologically that in 2021 (admittedly, a pretty awful year that followed another awful year) they were seriously considering ending their lives. Suddenly. Permanently. Dead.

Mary Kekatos and Youri Benadjaoud report that suicide is now the third-leading cause of death (after accidental injuries and homicide) among American high school students ages 14-18. (Not-so-fun fact: firearms play a big role in all three categories.)

Since 2019, teen girls saw a spike in suicidal ideation, while thoughts of suicide in teen boys remained stable:

[…] 9th and 10th-grade girls were more likely to seriously consider attempting suicide than 12th-grade girls.

Ninth graders who were seriously considering suicide increased from 23.7% in 2019 to 30.7% in 2021 and 10th graders saw an increase from 23.6% to 33.6% over the same period. However, for 12th-grade girls, the risk went up from 24.0% in 2019 to 25.6% in 2021.

Freshman and sophomore high school girls were also more likely to make a suicide plan and attempt suicide compared to senior high school girls, according to the CDC.

 

This most recent CDC study comes close on the heals of another study showing equally appalling results. In that study, 57% of teen girls (almost 3 in 5) said they felt “persistently sad or hopeless” in 2021, 18% (nearly 2 in 5) said they experienced sexual violence and 14% said they’d been forced to have sex. These numbers were all too much for The PediaBlog to handle when we covered it in April:

This is a “stop-everything-and-fix-it” moment. The stigma associated with mental illness must end. The targeting, dehumanizing, and excluding of LGBQ+ individuals must stop, especially in school. We can start by tolerating people who look differently, think differently, and perhaps act differently, and appreciate (and even be grateful for) the diversity that surrounds us.

Adults cannot continue to fail the next generation. The future is now. There is no time to lose.

 

 

National Suicide Prevention 988 Lifeline

 

Contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 24/7 by calling or texting 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org if you or a loved one are experiencing mental health-related distress and need crisis support. All calls are confidential.

 

 

source https://www.thepediablog.com/2023/05/10/teen-girls-are-in-trouble/