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MENTAL HEALTH
The 2019 World Happiness Report — a publication from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network that uses data from the Gallup World Poll — actually had an entire chapter called The Sad State of Happiness in the United States and the Role of Digital Media. That title alone is enough to drop our state of happiness a few points. From the report:
The years since 2010 have not been good ones for happiness and well-being among Americans. Even as the United States economy improved after the end of the Great Recession in 2009, happiness among adults did not rebound to the higher levels of the 1990s, continuing a slow decline ongoing since at least 2000 in the General Social Survey.
Happiness and life satisfaction among United States adolescents, which increased between 1991 and 2011, suddenly declined after 2012. Thus, by 2016-17, both adults and adolescents were reporting significantly less happiness than they had in the 2000s. In addition, numerous indicators of low psychological well-being such as depression, suicidal ideation, and self-harm increased sharply among adolescents since 2010, particularly among girls and young women. Depression and self-harm also increased over this time period among children and adolescents in the UK. Thus, those in iGen (born after 1995) are markedly lower in psychological well-being than Millennials (born 1980-1994) were at the same age.
This decline in happiness and mental health seems paradoxical. By most accounts, Americans should be happier now than ever. The violent crime rate is low, as is the unemployment rate. Income per capita has steadily grown over the last few decades. This is the Easterlin paradox: As the standard of living improves, so should happiness — but it has not.
That same year, Gallup’s annual update on the world’s emotional state reenforced this assessment:
Americans were more likely to be stressed and worried than much of the world. In fact, the 55 percent of Americans who experienced stress was one of the highest rates out of the 143 countries studied and it beat the global average (35 percent) by a full 20 percentage points. The U.S. even ties statistically with Greece, which has led the world on this measure every year since 2012.
Even as the economy roared, more Americans were stressed, angry and worried last year than they have been at most points during the past decade. Asked about their feelings the previous day, the majority of Americans (55 percent) in 2018 said they had experienced stress during a lot of the day, nearly half (45 percent) said they felt worried a lot and more than one in five (22 percent) said they felt anger a lot. Each of these figures matches or tops previous highs in the U.S.
The American Psychological Association’s (APA) report Stress in America 2023 discovered that “the Covid-19 pandemic, global conflicts, racism and racial injustice, inflation, and climate-related disasters are all weighing on the collective consciousness of Americans.”
The report continues: “The data suggests the long-term stress sustained since the Covid-19 pandemic began has had a significant impact on well-being, evidenced by an increase in chronic illnesses — especially among those between the ages of 35 and 44, which increased from 48 percent reported in 2019 to 58 percent in 2023. Adults ages 35 to 44 also experienced the highest increase in mental health diagnoses — from 31 percent reported in 2019 to 45 percent in 2023 — though adults ages 18 to 34 still reported the highest rate of mental illnesses at 50 percent in 2023.
Research from the University of Nebraska reveals that America’s divisive political environment also has a negative impact on the mental health of Americans:
“Large numbers of Americans reported politics takes a significant toll on a range of health markers — everything from stress, loss of sleep, or suicidal thoughts to an inability to stop thinking about politics and making intemperate social media posts.
The proportion of Americans reporting these effects stayed stable or slightly increased between the spring of 2017 and the fall of 2020 prior to the presidential election. Deterioration in measures of physical health became detectably worse in the wake of the 2020 election. Those who were young, politically interested, politically engaged, or on the political left were more likely to report negative effects.”
Worse, too many Americans are silently suffering, strangled by depression and emotional trauma — without the support they so desperately need.
The APA reports that “nearly half (47 percent) of Americans said they wish they had someone to help them manage their stress. In fact, two-thirds of adults (66 percent) said that, in the last 12 months, they could have used more emotional support than they received… more than half (52 percent) said they wish they had someone to turn to for advice and/or support.”
It should come as no surprise that the chaos we all endured in 2020 blew out every single statistic regarding mental health. At the time, NORC at the University of Chicago — the largest independent social research organization in the U.S. — found that Americans’ happiness was at a five-decade low.
One data point was particularly striking: At the time, only “42 percent of Americans believed that their children’s standard of living when they are older will be better than their own standard of living — a sharp decline from 57 percent in 2018 and the lowest level of optimism for the next generation since first measured in 1994.”
But remarkably that number is even worse today. A March 2023 survey conducted jointly by NORC and The Wall Street Journal found that an incredible 78 percent of respondents said they don’t feel confident that life for their children’s generation will be better than it has been for their own, the highest percentage since the survey began asking the question over three decades ago. Only 12 percent of respondents described themselves as “very happy,” the lowest percentage of Americans in fifty years.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that over 40 million adults in America have an anxiety disorder. The latest mental health survey from KFF — an independent, nonpartisan source for health policy research, polling, and journalism — found that half of all adults (51 percent) say they or a family member have experienced a severe mental health crisis in the past year.
Moreover, “the youngest adults, ages 18-29, are both the group reporting the most concerns with their mental health and also more likely to report they are seeking mental health services, but not always able to access them.” The report continues:
Half of young adults say they have felt anxious either ‘always’ or ‘often’ in the past year (compared to a third of adults overall), one-third describe their mental health or emotional well-being as ‘only fair’ or ‘poor’ (compared to 22 percent of adults overall), and four in ten say a doctor or other health care professional has told them that they have a mental health condition such as depression or anxiety.
The suicide rate among our kids is devastating. After decreasing for almost two decades, the suicide rate among Americans aged 10 to 24 increased a whopping 56 percent in just ten years (2007 to 2017). It is the third leading cause of death for Americans 15 to 19 years of age and the second leading cause of death for Americans between 20 to 24.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide claimed the lives of over 48,000 Americans of all ages in 2021. That’s one death every 11 minutes. That same year, 12.3 million Americans seriously contemplated suicide but didn’t go through with it, while 1.7 million attempted it but survived.
It shouldn’t be this way. Not in the United States of America.