According to a government survey released on Monday that supports earlier data, the pandemic had a severe impact on the mental health of American teen girls, with almost 60% of them reporting feelings of ongoing sadness or hopelessness.

Regardless of race or ethnicity, many teens experienced domestic harassment, suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior, and other mental health issues, but girls fared the worst overall, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the fall of 2021, a survey of more than 17,000 high school students in the US was conducted in class.

According to Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC's adolescent and school health division, "we've never seen this kind of devastating, consistent findings" in 30 years of gathering comparable data. The fact that young people tell us they are in crisis is undeniable. The data strongly urge us to take action.

In comparison to boys, girls were twice as likely to say they had seriously considered suicide (30%), an increase of almost 60% since ten years prior.

A rise from prior years was also seen in the percentage of girls who said they had been the victim of rape or other sexual violence in the year prior—nearly 20%.

Nearly half of LGBTQ students admitted that they had given suicide attempts serious thought.

In comparison to other races and ethnicities, a higher percentage of American Indians and Alaska Natives said they had seriously considered trying to commit suicide.

More than one-third of children of all races and ethnicities experienced persistent sadness and hopelessness, a rise from previous years.

Nearly one-third of American Indian and Alaska Native youth and half of LGBTQ youth reported having recent episodes of poor mental health.

The findings are consistent with earlier studies and reports, and many of the trends date back to before the pandemic. But during the pandemic, isolation, online learning, and increased reliance on social media made things worse for many children, according to mental health experts.

The findings "reflect so many decades of neglect towards mental health, for kids in particular," according to Mitch Prinstein, chief scientific officer of the American Psychological Association. For decades, suicide has consistently ranked as the second or third-leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 10 and 24. He added that attempts are typically more frequent in females.

According to Prinstein, pandemic isolation may have made anxiety and depression in teen girls and boys more severe.

Prinstein argued that a thorough overhaul of society's approach to mental health is required. According to him, schools should teach students how to deal with stress and conflict in a similar way that they teach them how to exercise to prevent physical diseases.

According to experts, the crisis has been made worse in low-income areas where the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences was high before the pandemic.

If they can find them, school districts across the nation have used federal pandemic money to hire more mental health specialists; however, they claim that these professionals are in short supply and that students who require specialized care outside of the classroom frequently cannot access it because therapists are overworked and have long waitlists.