“American youth are in the midst of a mental-illness epidemic.” In 2007, a mental-health survey to 5,591 college students found that 22% showed signs of depression. Over the next 15 years “this figure grew” in surveys. “In 2022, when more than 95,000 students at 373 universities were surveyed, a staggering 44% displayed symptoms of depression. Then, curiously, the trend reversed. In 2023 41% of students seemed depressed; in 2024, the figure fell again to 38%….‘It’s the first time that things are moving in a positive direction.’”
The Economist adds:
University students are not the only ones feeling more upbeat. An analysis of several national surveys by The Economist suggests that the brighter mood sweeping across college campuses is part of a broader trend among young people in America. From depression diagnoses to suicides, the data suggest that America’s kids are feeling slightly more cheery…
The shift follows more than a decade in which youngsters’ mental health deteriorated on virtually every measure. In 2022 one in six American adults under 25 reported feeling depressed at least once a week, more than double the rate seen ten years earlier; nearly one in ten adolescents said they had been diagnosed with depression; in 2021 more than one in five teenagers reported suffering a “major depressive episode” defined as a two-week period in which they were too sad to carry out everyday activities; and around 40% of high-school students said they had persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.
Researchers have struggled to explain why young people have become so unhappy. One popular theory, first proposed by Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, and popularised by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU, is that social media are to blame. The decline in teen mental health in the early 2010s, the argument goes, coincided with the rise of smartphones and social-media apps such as Instagram and Facebook. Although many find this theory appealing, the most rigorous studies, which track teens’ mood and social-media use over long periods of time, do not find a strong relationship between the use of such apps and subsequent poor mental health.
Cambodia has eliminated most of that country’s land mines, which were a leading cause of death for young people.
A new artificial heart makes survival easier.
Last year, nine nations eradicated a devastating disease. For example, Guinea eradicated sleeping sickness, which causes irreversible brain damage and then death, and Niger eliminated river blindness.
A virus is being used to cure deafness in new gene therapy. And scientists have engineered a virus to steal proteins from the HIV virus, in hopes of eliminating AIDS.
