Ask any parent, teacher or GP and they will tell you young people seem to be doing worse, mentally, than they used to.
Author
- Sabrina Lenzen
Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics, The University of Queensland
National surveys back them up.
The share of Australians aged 16-24 reporting a mental health problem in the past year jumped from about 25% in 2007 to almost 40% by 2020-22.
In the United Kingdom, the proportion of people aged 17-19 with a "probable mental disorder" rose from one in ten in 2017 to almost one in six in three years.
Similar trends emerge in Canada , the United States and many other countries with surveys that track mental health.
But are young people really doing worse? Or are they simply more willing to admit they're struggling?
Our new study , which has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication in the Journal of Population Economics, provides some answers.
Taboos are lifting
Talking about mental health has become far less taboo over the past two decades. Schools teach emotional wellbeing . Kids and adolescents hear about campaigns such as " R U OK Day ". Celebrities openly discuss depression . Social media is full of conversations that previous generations rarely had.
So when surveys show young people report much poorer mental health than previous generations did at the same age, we wanted to know how much reflects real change and how much reflects a cultural shift in what they report.
So we analysed more than two decades of nationally representative Australian data, following almost 270,000 survey responses collected between 2002 and 2023.
We used the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, which has followed the same families every year since 2001, asking about their mental health, money, relationships and major life events.
We tracked what people said about their mental health. We also estimated what we would expect their mental health to look like based on many well-established risk factors. These include their physical health, financial stress, employment, life events and childhood circumstances.
Comparing these two measures allowed us to separate changes in underlying mental health from changes in how willing different generations are to report distress.
What we found
Imagine two people with exactly the same symptoms. One grew up in the 1960s, when discussing depression was often seen as a sign of weakness. The other grew up in the 2000s, when talking openly about mental health became far more accepted.
Even if they felt equally distressed, they might answer the same survey question differently. That's exactly what we found.
We found younger generations had a lower bar for saying they were struggling. The youngest women in our study, born between 2001 and 2008, needed far less to go wrong before they said they were distressed compared with women the same age a decade or two earlier.
But that is only half the story.
Even after stripping out this reporting gap, young people's underlying mental health has genuinely worsened. For the youngest women, 63% reported poor mental health, but based on their life circumstances alone, we would predict 49%.
Both numbers matter. The 49% shows real distress; the 14 percentage point gap shows a generation far more willing to say they're distressed.
Lessons about older people too
We also compared reported and predicted mental health across a person's whole lifespan.
In people's raw survey answers, the rise and fall of mental health across a lifetime is only mildly visible.
But once we corrected for how differently each generation describes distress, a much clearer picture emerged.
Poor mental health built steadily through the 40s and eased off around retirement, echoing the classic midlife dip in wellbeing documented across dozens of countries .
That dip was there all along. It had just been partly masked by generational differences, with people in midlife, especially men, less likely to report their distress.
What does this all mean?
Our study does not suggest today's youth mental health crisis is simply a result of greater openness. Even after accounting for changing reporting behaviour, younger generations still have substantially poorer mental health than previous generations did at the same age.
The fact that younger generations feel more comfortable talking about mental health should be seen as progress, not a problem. Greater openness makes it easier for people to seek help before problems become crises.
But our findings are also a reminder that older men, in particular, may still be suffering in silence. If we want mental health services, workplaces and public campaigns to meet real need, we need to understand not only who is struggling, but also who is willing to say so.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you're concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.
Sabrina Lenzen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
