1 In Every 3 High School Girls Contemplated Suicide In 2021, Revealing A Mental Health Crisis That Started Long Before Covid Pandemic
By now, we all are aware of the ever-increasing rates of mental illness in our country, but new research from the CDC indicates that teens and young women are suffering at incredibly high rates. As much as we want to blame the coronavirus pandemic, data shows that this issue started long before.
If you take a look around how teenage girls act and dress today, the sight is very different from what we saw just 20 years ago. They're all addicted to their phones, they wear the same makeup and outfits as 30-year-olds, and they're desperate to be older than they actually are. Put simply, these girls have lost their childhood in a way. While these are simply things that we observe in our day-to-day interactions, recent research confirms that there is something sinister happening amongst teen girls. Mental health illnesses and even suicidal ideations are more common than ever, and these issues can't be pinned to the coronavirus pandemic (even though that certainly didn't help).
1 in Every 3 High School Girls Contemplated Suicide in 2021, Revealing a Mental Health Crisis That Started Long Before Covid Pandemic
Time magazine published an article called "Teens Girls Are Facing a Mental Health Epidemic. We're Doing Nothing About It" in which the writer pointed to a report from the CDC that found 1 in every 3 high school girls considered suicide in 2021. This is a 60% increase since 2011. Sadly, it's not just suicidal thoughts that are increasing amongst teen girls. There have been increased attempts at self-harm, suicides, and suicide attempts. While this is true for boys, the rates of these incidents are even higher amongst girls. When you look around the social landscape of the US, it's easy to point to the coronavirus pandemic as the culprit. But numbers show that these issues have started long before Covid arrived.
The rate of depression amongst teens doubled between 2010 and 2019 and the numbers rose at the same rate during the years we were on lockdown. In 2017, the CDC says the number of girls ages 10 to 14 who were admitted to the emergency room for self-harm tripled between 2009 and 2015. By the time 2016 rolled around, 90% of all teen girls used social media every single day while they were seeing their friends in person less and less. And we all know that increased use of screen time has been linked to mood disorders such as depression.
The Time article also points out that there was much denial in the last several years about the rise of mental illness amongst teenage girls, and that many experts claimed there really wasn't anything to worry about. Now that we're in 2023 and the numbers just keep rising, people are starting to finally notice and insist that something is wrong.
The CDC recommends better mental health services at school, making schools more inclusive, and improving health education. But one could easily argue that all of these have improved over the last several years. What nobody is talking about seriously, let alone specifically addressing, is the way that young girls use social media today. They are privy to TikTok and Instagram at the tender ages of 14 or even younger and they're constantly looking at influencers and celebrities who have had their fair share of plastic surgery as well as photoshop, promoting a false sense of beauty that these young girls take to heart.
Even more than that, nobody is talking about how physical health plays a huge role in mental health. Of course we want to see teens spend less time on their phones, but we also need to encourage them to exercise more, go outside in the sun more, and eat a healthier diet. Americans' diet is worse than ever; it's full of processed foods, seed oils, and nutritionally lacking meals that are being fed to teens both in school and at home. This leads to poor gut health, low immunity, and worsening brain health, all of which certainly contribute to mental health.
Additionally, everyone is ignoring the fact that thousands of these teen girls are prescribed the birth control pill from a young age (sometimes even as young as 13), and the pill has been linked to mood disorders and gut issues (which are also clearly linked to depression and anxiety). It's no wonder so many young girls are struggling with their mental health—they are given hormonal birth control starting at a young age by doctors who claim that there are no side effects. We can't have an honest discussion about how to lower rates of mental illness unless we seriously talk about what's happening with the health of teens all around.