A widely documented rise in worry, stress, and depression that peaks in midlife and then declines may have disappeared due to worsening youth mental health, suggests new study co-led by UCL academics.
Researchers at UCL Social Research Institute, Dartmouth College and Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) studied survey data and found that the well documented trend of ill-being that peaks during midlife before declining, known as the 'unhappiness hump', no longer stands up.
The study, published in PLOS One, suggests that the reason for the change is the deterioration in young people's mental health both absolutely and relative to older people.
The researchers first spotted the unhappiness hump trend had disappeared when they analysed US and UK survey data, including data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study.
They tested whether the same pattern could be seen at a global scale by analysing the Global Minds Dataset, which assessed nearly 2 million people across 44 countries over the period 2020-2025.
All the datasets suggest the unhappiness hump has disappeared worldwide.
Reasons for the disappearance of the unhappiness hump are unclear. The authors suggest several possibilities, including long-term impacts of the 2008 global financial crisis on job prospects for younger people, underfunded mental health care services, mental health challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and increased social media use. Further research is needed to determine whether any of these or other factors are at play.
Co-author Professor Alex Bryson (UCL Social Research Institute) said: "Ours is the first paper to show that the decline in young people's mental health in recent years means that today, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, mental ill-being is highest among the young and declines with age.
""This is a huge change from the past when mental ill-being peaked in middle-age. The reasons for the change are disputed but our concern is that today there is a serious mental health crisis among the young that needs addressing."
