Horrific statistics about the mental health of teenage girls in USA \ Globally

[alhoon]

From this article of WP citing research from this huge report.

"Teen girls across the United States are “engulfed in a growing wave of violence and trauma,” according to federal researchers who released data Monday showing increases in rape and sexual violence, as well as record levels of feeling sad or hopeless.
Nearly 1 in 3 high school girls reported in 2021 that they seriously considered suicide — up nearly 60 percent from a decade ago — according to new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost 15 percent of teen girls said they were forced to have sex, an increase of 27 percent over two years and the first increase since the CDC began tracking it.
[...]
Almost 3 in 5 teenage girls reported feeling so persistently sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row during the previous year that they stopped regular activities — a figure that was double the share of boys and the highest in a decade, CDC data showed.
[...]
13% had attempted suicide during the past year, compared with 7% of boys."



What the... I had no idea! What is happening over there? Sure, sure, the article mentions some reasons but I am not sure it's the complete picture.

1 / 7 teenage girls sexually assaulted! I don't think rapes are that high, but sexual assault by a horny boyfriend in the back of the car even if he doesn't go all the way? Weeeell... there's a reason I advise fathers to take a moment to show the house to 16-year-old visiting boys including their knife or gun collection. This is the one thing I can think that guns are good for: reducing the chances your daughter will be in that 15%.

And 3/5 girls so stressed and sad they stop their regular activities for 2 weeks. And 3/10 boys! That's also a high number!
We can blame them for being soft snowflakes but that doesn't solve the issue, does it?

And then, the worse statistic of them all: 1/3 girls considering suicide and 1/8 attempting suicide in the past year + 1/14 boys. that's horrific. And when I say horrific, I don't mean the expression, I mean the stand there frozen (terror) and then lay awake at night thinking if your nieces, the daughters of your friends etc will be there next year. And what is pushing them to consider that.

And to close, this one: "Hoover and others pointed out it is unclear whether the data is influenced by other factors — if girls were more aware of depressive symptoms than boys, for instance, or more inclined to report them — or whether girls are simply far worse off."
So... it could be worse than the numbers given for boys too, but they may be ashamed to report them!


What do you guys think? What are the reasons or some of the reasons, in your opinion for these horrific statistics? What can society do to reverse the trend? Do you think teenagers in other countries have as many issues?

My opinion is that the gradual destruction of the nuclear family and the number of divorces is certainly playing a role here. The expectations placed on girls, not just for beauty (which is real) but also academically certainly adds to that. Put in the number of school shootings making teens wondering whether their school will be the next one in the news (there's a school shooting per day in the USA nowdays) and it starts getting bleak. Then, comes the sexual assault. A girl from a divorced family, struggling with her grades while she wants to socialize with friends that is assaulted by her boyfriend that she was trusting, and then sees all the suicide statistics or hears about the girl next class that attempted suicide... she will consider it. And apparently there's no shortage of teens attempting suicide for her to hear about.

I am not sure how to make teens more thick-skinned and able to brush off online bullies etc without being traumatized or, frankly, how to actually get in their heads that the boyfriend they trust or the gym buddy they tease may try something in that party. I have been a teenager. I was trusting my friends, whether they deserved it or not (they did in most part, thankfully).
What I know is that school councelors and teen mental health people should sit together, have funding and come up with potential tactics and solutions that the parents should read. As in have to read. No, NOT telling parents how to raise their teen! Just a few different strategies on how to do it for the parents to consider.
And telling the parents how big the problem is in school meetings. I honestly doubt that the average 40-years-old knows that 1/3 girls considered suicide. They are, as this article states, very good at hiding it.


EDIT

Key facts

• Nearly 3 in 4 children - or 300 million children - aged 2–4 years regularly suffer physical punishment and/or psychological violence at the hands of parents and caregivers
• One in 5 women and 1 in 13 men report having been sexually abused as a child aged 0-17 years.
• 120 million girls and young women under 20 years of age have suffered some form of forced sexual contact.
• Consequences of child maltreatment include impaired lifelong physical and mental health, and the social and occupational outcomes can ultimately slow a country's economic and social development.
• Child maltreatment is often hidden. Only a fraction of child victims of maltreatment ever gets support from health professionals.
• A child who is abused is more likely to abuse others as an adult so that violence is passed down from one generation to the next. It is therefore critical to break this cycle of violence, and in so doing create positive multi-generational impacts.
• Preventing child maltreatment before it starts is possible and requires a multisectoral approach.
• Effective prevention approaches include supporting parents and teaching positive parenting skills, and enhancing laws to prohibit violent punishment.
• Ongoing care of children and families can reduce the risk of maltreatment reoccurring and can minimize its consequences.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-s...d-maltreatment

[mishkin]

how to actually get in their heads that the boyfriend they trust or the gym buddy they tease may try something in that party.

I don't know, maybe teenage girls are especially pissed off because of the prevailing machismo that justifies an attempted abuse because "she teased you in the gym." and because of the progressives destroying the traditional family of course

[Lord Thesaurian]

It’s social media + atheism + absentee parents.

Pre-adulthood use of technology and social media may be particularly concerning. There is reason to be significantly concerned about the age at which many youth begin using technology and social media. Developmental neuroscientists have revealed that there are two highly critical periods for adaptive neural development. Aberrations in our brain growth during these periods may have lifetime implications. One of these is the first year of life. The second begins at the outset of puberty and lasts until early adulthood (i.e., from approximately 10 to 25 years old). This latter period is highly relevant, as this is when a great number of youths are offered relatively unfettered access to devices and unrestricted or unsupervised use of social media and other online platforms.

Adolescents frequently are exposed to content online depicting illegal, immoral, dangerous, and unethical behavior. The architecture of many social media platforms allows users to like, repost, or comment on this content. Emerging data suggest that these features of social media present a significant risk to adolescents’ mental health. Specifically, data reveal that social media may change adolescents’ susceptibility to maladaptive behavior through both biological and psychological pathways.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo...0Prinstein.pdf

Results indicated that as compared with non-left-behind children, the left-behind children with both-parents absence were statistically more likely to show suicide ideation. Furthermore, all the three types parental absence—father absence, mother absence, and both-parents absence were significantly associated with negative emotional outcomes. Moreover, depression, social anxiety, and physical anxiety were shown to be significant mediators in the relationship of parental absence and suicide ideation of children

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...l.pone.0188823

With more and more American kids being raised by social media instead of their parents, it’s no wonder the situation is bad and worsening.

This study explores the impact of religion and spirituality on mental health in youth with mild-to-severe mental health symptoms during the global pandemic of COVID-19. We hypothesize that R/S has a positive impact on mental health and can be a protective factor in how youth cope with mental health symptoms, especially during a global crisis.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7567518/

Using a representative sample of 71,001 Utah adolescents (data collected by the Utah Department of Health), religious affiliation was found related to significantly lower rates of teen suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts and lower levels of depression. For religiously affiliated adolescents, the rate of considering and attempting suicide was nearly half that of unaffiliated adolescents.

https://foundations.byu.edu/0000017e...tal-health-pdf

Children who have a positive, active relationship to spirituality:
* are 40% less likely to use and abuse substances
* are 60% less likely to be depressed as teenagers
* are 80% less likely to have dangerous or unprotected sex
* have significantly more positive markers for thriving including an increased sense of meaning and purpose, and high levels of academic success.

https://www.lisamillerphd.com/the-spiritual-child

Of key predictors of religious disbelief, witnessing fewer credible cultural cues of religious commitment was the most potent, β = .28, followed distantly by reflective cognitive style, β = .13, and less advanced mentalizing, β = .05. Low cultural exposure predicted about 90% higher odds of atheism than did peak cognitive reflection, and cognitive reflection only predicted disbelief among those relatively low in cultural exposure to religion.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ful...48550621994001

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

9 Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.
10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.
11 For by me thy days shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life shall be increased.
12 If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself: but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.

3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;
4 Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
5 For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.
6 And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation.
7 And our hope of you is stedfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation.

So yes after decades of ideological warfare against the traditional family unit and against Christianity, it’s no surprise the liberal establishment has nothing to replace them with, and the society they’ve defrauded is circling the drain as a result.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

I don't know, maybe teenage girls are especially pissed off because of the prevailing machismo that justifies an attempted abuse because "she teased you in the gym." and because of the progressives destroying the traditional family of course

Of course its only the progressives fault take girls out of public schools let them left their home only in company of their fathers and brothers, they don't need education, family values matters!

Problem solved. Or not?

[mishkin]

the good old days where girls could be traumatized at home by their loving christian father (most of sexual abuse is committed by a family member), and you had to be a real hero to report abuse or to declare (whom?) that you were not an emotionally perfectly healthy young lady.

[Septentrionalis]

Those figures seem impossible by intuition. 13 % attempted suicide? Self-reported sexual assault figures, unless defined very rigorously in the study, aren't worth much. There are so many things a woman can label a sexual assault.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Another thread where the Libs/Lefts are accused of ruining family values, destroying society with their atheistic policy and making false accusations of rape against innocent poor men. Throw all lefties in jail / kill them all?

Have i made a fitting summary of the future course of this thread?

[chriscase]

It’s social media + atheism + absentee parents.

With more and more American kids being raised by social media instead of their parents, it’s no wonder the situation is bad and worsening.

…

So yes after decades of ideological warfare against the traditional family unit and against Christianity, it’s no surprise the liberal establishment has nothing to replace them with, and the society they’ve defrauded is circling the drain as a result.

Believing in fairies might make me the life of the cocktail party, but that won’t make fairies any more real.

I know a number of studies point at social media, and there are also legal actions under way that press this point. It seems to me that there is a bit more to this though. When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, it seemed the world was on the cusp of total, inevitable destruction by way of thermonuclear war. There was a certain sense of unavoidable destruction that felt all the more idiotic because the agents of destruction were entirely of our own devising. All that was needed was for us not to blow the world up with nukes (something we still need not to do).

The climate crisis feels at once more pernicious and more difficult to address. There is seemingly an even deeper sense of inevitable global catastrophe due to global warming, and a sense that nothing anyone can do will save the planet. Given the information saturation of the American public, I suspect this kind of data has a very profound effect on our youngsters.

[alhoon]

I don't know, maybe teenage girls are especially pissed off because of the prevailing machismo that justifies an attempted abuse because "she teased you in the gym." and because of the progressives destroying the traditional family of course

You may be sarcastic, but I agree with the statement you made. The destruction of families certainly plays a large part (read the studies about it). And while nothing justifies sexual assault, I do blame the prevailing machismo that has idiots (like Trump) thinking they can grab them by the genitals.
Social media are blamed by several studies too as well as absentee and distant parents.

That said, your comment is not exactly helpful, is it?

Of course its only the progressives fault take girls out of public schools let them left their home only in company of their fathers and brothers, they don't need education, family values matters!

Problem solved. Or not?

Not solved.
For starters, much of the abuse (not necessarily sexual) happens at home.

What the heck are you suggesting, @Morticia and @Mishkin?!? Why are you trolling? Where the heck did you see me suggesting those extreme things you throw out? If you don't want to contribute to the discussion you don't have to, you know.

Those figures seem impossible by intuition. 13 % attempted suicide? Self-reported sexual assault figures, unless defined very rigorously in the study, aren't worth much. There are so many things a woman can label a sexual assault.

Yes, I was stunned too. And then I talked with my father that told me that he expected sexual assault (and not just a 16 years old putting his hand where he shouldn't during class) to be that high. He reminded me that we have been reading for years that these statistics are raising.
Other parents in USA I contacted were alarmed, they didn't expect things to be that bad, but they were not too surprised either.

Another thread where the Libs/Lefts are accused of ruining family values, destroying society with their atheistic policy and making false accusations of rape against innocent poor men. Throw all lefties in jail / kill them all?

Have i made a fitting summary of the future course of this thread?

I hope not.
Not to mention that nobody (so far) said that the accusations of sexual assault are fake and nobody suggested throwing leftwings in jail.
I will ask again: if you don't want to participate in this discussion Morticia, why are you trolling?

The climate crisis feels at once more pernicious and more difficult to address. There is seemingly an even deeper sense of inevitable global catastrophe due to global warming, and a sense that nothing anyone can do will save the planet. Given the information saturation of the American public, I suspect this kind of data has a very profound effect on our youngsters.

For Social Media, it's not just climate anxiety, Chris.
Bullying happens or is magnified through social media. A ton of information, much of it contradicting and much of it completely false is circulating there too and many teenagers are not yet mature enough to shift through the poop.

Another thing my father said was that he expected things were very bad for USA teenagers because of the raise of mass shootings. Not that mass shootings put suicidal thoughts to boys and girls or increase bullying but... the reasons that cause 1 teen to do a mass shooting are the reasons 1000 of them consider suicide. I.e. the angst and deteriorating mental health of boys and girls leads to many bad things (the withdrawal of 60% of girls, raise of cyberbullying, raise of suicides, raise of violence in general and raise of mass shootings in particular).

Another thing that was brought to my attention by parents I know was that while the teenagers in the report claimed they were good at hiding their suffering... it is the job of the parent to be close to his or her kids and figure it out AND that those teens that think fooling parents that are involved, caring and loving is easy are wrong. More than one parent to be exact.
Sure, I do believe some teens (a few) are good enough to deceive parents that care and spend time to look for the symptoms and the issues but I believe most teens cannot succeed on that, not for long... except when the truth is too hard for the parents to see. A friend of mine (his daughter is much younger than a teen but there have been problematic teens in his close environment as he was growing up) said that parents sometimes don't want to see the problem. As in, parents don't want to think their daughter may have been sexually assaulted so they ignore the signs. Parents don't want to believe their son is the class bully so they ignore the signs. Etc.

[conon394]

From this article of WP citing research from this huge report.

"Teen girls across the United States are “engulfed in a growing wave of violence and trauma,” according to federal researchers who released data Monday showing increases in rape and sexual violence, as well as record levels of feeling sad or hopeless.
Nearly 1 in 3 high school girls reported in 2021 that they seriously considered suicide — up nearly 60 percent from a decade ago — according to new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost 15 percent of teen girls said they were forced to have sex, an increase of 27 percent over two years and the first increase since the CDC began tracking it.
[...]
Almost 3 in 5 teenage girls reported feeling so persistently sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row during the previous year that they stopped regular activities — a figure that was double the share of boys and the highest in a decade, CDC data showed.
[...]
13% had attempted suicide during the past year, compared with 7% of boys."



What the... I had no idea! What is happening over there? Sure, sure, the article mentions some reasons but I am not sure it's the complete picture.

1 / 7 teenage girls sexually assaulted! I don't think rapes are that high, but sexual assault by a horny boyfriend in the back of the car even if he doesn't go all the way? Weeeell... there's a reason I advise fathers to take a moment to show the house to 16-year-old visiting boys including their knife or gun collection. This is the one thing I can think that guns are good for: reducing the chances your daughter will be in that 15%.

And 3/5 girls so stressed and sad they stop their regular activities for 2 weeks. And 3/10 boys! That's also a high number!
We can blame them for being soft snowflakes but that doesn't solve the issue, does it?

And then, the worse statistic of them all: 1/3 girls considering suicide and 1/8 attempting suicide in the past year + 1/14 boys. that's horrific. And when I say horrific, I don't mean the expression, I mean the stand there frozen (terror) and then lay awake at night thinking if your nieces, the daughters of your friends etc will be there next year. And what is pushing them to consider that.

And to close, this one: "Hoover and others pointed out it is unclear whether the data is influenced by other factors — if girls were more aware of depressive symptoms than boys, for instance, or more inclined to report them — or whether girls are simply far worse off."
So... it could be worse than the numbers given for boys too, but they may be ashamed to report them!


What do you guys think? What are the reasons or some of the reasons, in your opinion for these horrific statistics? What can society do to reverse the trend? Do you think teenagers in other countries have as many issues?

My opinion is that the gradual destruction of the nuclear family and the number of divorces is certainly playing a role here. The expectations placed on girls, not just for beauty (which is real) but also academically certainly adds to that. Put in the number of school shootings making teens wondering whether their school will be the next one in the news (there's a school shooting per day in the USA nowdays) and it starts getting bleak. Then, comes the sexual assault. A girl from a divorced family, struggling with her grades while she wants to socialize with friends that is assaulted by her boyfriend that she was trusting, and then sees all the suicide statistics or hears about the girl next class that attempted suicide... she will consider it. And apparently there's no shortage of teens attempting suicide for her to hear about.

I am not sure how to make teens more thick-skinned and able to brush off online bullies etc without being traumatized or, frankly, how to actually get in their heads that the boyfriend they trust or the gym buddy they tease may try something in that party. I have been a teenager. I was trusting my friends, whether they deserved it or not (they did in most part, thankfully).
What I know is that school councelors and teen mental health people should sit together, have funding and come up with potential tactics and solutions that the parents should read. As in have to read. No, NOT telling parents how to raise their teen! Just a few different strategies on how to do it for the parents to consider.
And telling the parents how big the problem is in school meetings. I honestly doubt that the average 40-years-old knows that 1/3 girls considered suicide. They are, as this article states, very good at hiding it.

Find me some comparable, good credible data 1960, 50 40, 30 20 and maybe I have a basis is to start worrying.

My opinion is that the gradual destruction of the nuclear family and the number of divorces

Ahh the Nuclear like the one grandfather grew up till he was sixteen and beat the living crap out of his drunken abusive father and tossed out of the house forever that abuse of Couse laughed of the police when they did show up in the Polish neighbor.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Believing in fairies might make me the life of the cocktail party, but that won’t make fairies any more real.

This guy isn’t a woman and this guy isn’t a wolf. Getting rid of God won’t get rid of make-believe fanaticism, and it has yet to usher in a rationalist utopia either. The Romans did OK for a long time without God. I suppose if leftists had re-introduced a culture of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus instead of one where no one can define the word “woman” and calling a mother “mother” instead of “birthing person” is considered tone deaf/out of touch, the next generation might be a little less nihilistic.

I know a number of studies point at social media, and there are also legal actions under way that press this point. It seems to me that there is a bit more to this though. When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, it seemed the world was on the cusp of total, inevitable destruction by way of thermonuclear war. There was a certain sense of unavoidable destruction that felt all the more idiotic because the agents of destruction were entirely of our own devising. All that was needed was for us not to blow the world up with nukes (something we still need not to do).

The climate crisis feels at once more pernicious and more difficult to address. There is seemingly an even deeper sense of inevitable global catastrophe due to global warming, and a sense that nothing anyone can do will save the planet. Given the information saturation of the American public, I suspect this kind of data has a very profound effect on our youngsters.

The most common factors contributing to poor mental health among teens have consistently been tied to social media and the online world, worsened by dysfunctional parental relationships, rather than to something as tangible as concern about climate change in particular. Humanity has dealt with ice ages, pandemics, world wars, learned to survive in the harshest deserts and coldest mountains and wettest jungles. Maybe if kids had been taught some basic coping and social skills by their married mothers and fathers instead of a weird combination of hedonism and self-loathing by their favorite Tik Toker, they’d be in a better mood. Everyone and everything will rot way and disappear, no matter what else happens in the interim. Only great words and deeds will outlast us.

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

Another thread where the Libs/Lefts are accused of ruining family values, destroying society with their atheistic policy and making false accusations of rape against innocent poor men. Throw all lefties in jail / kill them all?

On the contrary, being consumed by the clown world they’ve created is a more fitting end than anything a conservative could come up with by saying “I told you so.” It’s just a shame the kids the OP is talking about have to suffer the consequences. C’est la vie.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[alhoon]

Find me some comparable, good credible data 1960, 50 40, 30 20 and maybe I have a basis is to start worrying.

60% of girls 16-19 have spent at least 2 consecutive weeks withdrawn from activities because they were miserable, 15% admit to sexual assault (so the numbers are certainly higher), 13% considered suicide in the past year... and you don't worry because we don't have credible data from thee 60s?!?!?!

What data from the 60s have to do with the situation girls are in NOW? Do you somehow mistrust data of 2022 because we can't compare them with data from 60 years ago?!?
I honestly don't even understand what you're trying to say here. How does the lack of data from 1920-1960s change how things are now?

Even if things in the 40s (WW2) were worse for the mental health of teenage girls... how that changes that 13% of girls attempted suicide in the past year?!?

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

...
Ahh the Nuclear like the one grandfather grew up till he was sixteen and beat the living crap out of his drunken abusive father and tossed out of the house forever that abuse of Couse laughed of the police when they did show up in the Polish neighbor.

Oh that phenomena is known here in Germany too. All those brutalized german men, which came home from war and beat the out of their children and wifes for minor things till their wifes finally and forever divorced with the heavy iron pan, while the tyrann of the house was sleeping. Oh happy nuclear family...

[mishkin]

alhoon, if you want to show that the mental health of young people is worse now than twenty or sixty years ago, you should provide evidence. The mental health of young people sixty years ago was probably much worse than it is today (physical and psychological violence was much more frequent, society much more closed). If you want to attack modern society, with its single or homosexual families and its films with homosexual characters, you will need more.

batch of personal anecdotes. A few days ago I was talking to my 82-year-old aunt. She told me what her life was like in her neighborhood (she with a stock on her feet, thirteen-year-old girls pregnant or dying from abortions...) and she was surprised at how she had evolved into something so normal / not a psychopath.

It's horrible that 1/3 of girls have suicidal ideation. Open a discussion about it. Don't try to talk about a degeneration of society, because the real horror was growing up sixty years ago.

[Sir Adrian]

Willing to bet the majority of those girls mental health problems are caused by social media and ridiculous standards it forces them to set for themselves.

[mishkin]

Let's remember that 50 years ago girls were also required to be beautiful and slim, as well as quiet and obedient, and they were already indoctrinated so that their primary objective was to marry (a man of course, non-normative sexual orientations were considered aberrations) and have children. All very healthy.

[alhoon]

It's horrible that 1/3 of girls have suicidal ideation. Open a discussion about it.

I did. This is the discussion!

alhoon, if you want to show that the mental health of young people is worse now than twenty or sixty years ago, you should provide evidence.

I don't want to show that it is worse now than 20 or 60 years ago. I want to show that it is very bad, surprisingly bad now. How it was 60 years ago, or indeed 80 years ago (ww2 when teens had to worry about going to a big war) is not the point here.

Don't try to talk about a degeneration of society, because the real horror was growing up sixty years ago.

However, studies do point out that there is a worsening of those statistics in the past 10-20 years. It is in the study mentioned and the articles in the OP.

Still, since you asked, I don't think things 60 years ago (1960s) were worse for teenagers in general. Less mass shootings, less bullying, better families etc etc. Thirteen years olds pregnant or dying from abortion is horrific too, but I don't think 15% of girls 16-19 were in such risks.

Anyway, we DO have reliable data from the 90s and studies DO point out the statistics are worsening. And one of the main reasons for this in several studies (including the one in the OP) is the problems within the family. It is not easy for a single mother or father to raise three kids and work full time to support them. Not enough time and the kids miss the other parent. Not to mention that for the parents to divorce, something was going wrong for some time and that would affect the kids.
This can't be hard to figure out.

Another issue pointed at by a great many studies is social media. It can't be the first time you hear of this. It is discussed for nearly 15 years.

Let's remember that 50 years ago girls were also required to be beautiful and slim, as well as quiet and obedient, and they were already indoctrinated so that their primary objective was to marry (a man of course, non-normative sexual orientations were considered aberrations) and have children. All very healthy.

Dude, why you keep talking history in a threat about a problem that plagues girls today?
OK, let's for the moment assume that life was absolute hell for teenage girls in the 60s, and that a great number of them wanted to make a suicide or were withdrawn from social life or that they were raped in great numbers unseen since then...
How that changes that NOW there is a 60% of girls that have spent 2 weeks+ locked in their room after school, or that 15% of them had been sexually assaulted in the past 5 years or that 1/3 of them consider suicidice? Is this the Utopia you have in mind???
Do you feel "mission accomplished!" or "nah, things were worse in the past, the middle ages were horrid! So why worry now?" about these statistics? Because that's what your post reads like!
And I am sure you don't actually think that 15% of suicidal thoughts or 13% of sexual assault is all preachy because during the Great War things were worse. So... why do you keep repeating that things in the past were bad too? How that helps?!

As for the degeneration of society, statistics very clearly point an increasing in such things for the past 15 or more years (some statistics are monitored since the 90s and yes, they are worsening). And not just in the USA, mind you.
Cyberbullying and teen-on-teen violence is increasing in my country too and from what I have heard in North Europe too.

[mishkin]

In the OP you point out the disappearance of the traditional family as the main factor in the state of mental health of adolescents. You don't have any proof about it, you don't even have any good argument. It's just your opinion that in the old days, with traditional families, families (children and adolescents) were happier. Let me know when you have something to back up your words.

[alhoon]

In the OP you point out the disappearance of the traditional family as the main factor in the state of mental health of adolescents. You don't have any proof about it, you don't even have any good argument. It's just your opinion that in the old days, with traditional families, families (children and adolescents) were happier. Let me know when you have something to back up your words.

Noooooope, in the OP I point out several factors as contributing. ONE of them is the hits taken by the traditional family (not exactly disappearance; dad beating mom is also bad).
Furthermore, as I say in the OP... there are many factors and I ask people what they think the factors are. This is a discussion about what you think are the factors. I have stated what I think are some of the factors, including weakening traditional family, but also bullying, sexual assault/violence, impossible standards/hard expectations and social media.

As far as reasons I haven't thought in the OP go, I've got so far:
- Girls need more Jesus.
- Girls had it worse back in the 50s.
- One decent answer from Chris.

[Lord Thesaurian]

You don't have any proof about it, you don't even have any good argument. It's just your opinion that in the old days, with traditional families, families (children and adolescents) were happier. Let me know when you have something to back up your words.

This isn’t true. The same factors I highlighted previously have driven the decline in adolescent mental health for decades. Even in 2000, before the rise of smartphones and pocket access to social media, the American Psychological Association cited changing divorce rates, birth rates and crime rates and social isolation as the primary reasons teens then reported higher levels of anxiety/depression than psychiatric patients in the 1950s, reflecting a trend that began in the 1960s.

Many social statistics point to a breakdown in social connect- edness. The divorce rate has increased, the birth rate has dropped, people marry later in life, and many more people now live alone (11% in 1950, compared with 25% in 1997). In addition, Putnam (2000) found that Americans are now less likely to join community organizations and visit friends than they once were. Connectedness can also be measured by levels of trust (Fukuyama, 1999), and these levels have also declined (only 18.3% of high school seniors in 1992 agreed that you can usually trust people, compared with 34.5% in 1975; Smith, 1997).

Although no known studies have examined change in anxiety over the time period studied, some evidence on related variables suggests that anxiety should increase over time. First, large panel studies have consistently found that younger cohorts show more, and longer, episodes of depression (Klerman & Weissman, 1989; Lewinsohn et al., 1993). Some psychologists have gone so far as to label this effect a modern epidemic of depression (Seligman, 1988, 1995) or age of melancholy (Hagnell, Lanke, Rorsman, & Ojesjo, 1982). Anxiety and depression are highly correlated (e.g., Tanaka-Matsumi & Kameoka, 1986), indicating that anxiety should also have increased.

Have college students' self-reported levels of anxiety and neu- roticism increased from 1952 to 1993? The results show unequiv- ocally that they have. In regressions weighted by sample size, every measure produced a significant positive correlation with year (see Table 1), with most correlations over .40 and many over .60.

Sex differences in anxiety, calculated using the formula to compute d and weighted by w (e.g., Wolf, 1986) were d = .24 across 118 samples of college students, meaning that women scored about a quarter of a standard deviation higher than men.

Strong, significant correlations appear between social connect- edness and anxiety, as well as between overall threat and anxiety. Changes in the divorce rate, the birth rate, and the crime rate are all highly correlated with children's anxiety. In general, it appears that lower social connectedness and higher threat led to higher anxiety.

These samples were drawn from a more diverse range of socio- economic status than the college samples, and thus we might expect more of an influence from economic conditions. However, this was not the case: Economic conditions were not correlated with anxiety, similar to the college samples. Unemployment rates are positively correlated with children's anxiety, particularly for the study year and 5 years prior. In contrast, the percentage of children in poverty is actually negatively correlated with anxiety. One might think that when more children were living in poverty, the overall average anxiety score would go up. However, the percentage of children in poverty decreased during the 1960s, exactly when anxiety scores began to zoom upward. Economic conditions do not explain the rise in anxiety.

Two meta-analyses find that self-reports of anxiety/neuroticism have increased substantially from the 1950s to the early 1990s. The birth cohort change in anxiety is so large that by the 1980s normal child samples were scoring higher than child psychiatric patients from the 1950s (Levitt, 1959). In both studies, anxiety levels are correlated with low social connectedness and high environmental threat; economic conditions do not explain the rise in anxiety, even among the socioeconomically diverse samples in Study 2.

One might well have assumed that children would mainly be affected by family influences whereas adults would be affected by broader social trends. The present data do not support that analysis, however; they suggest that childhood is the time of the greatest societal influence (of course, some of these effects could be mediated through the immediate family). Contrary to views that children have nothing to worry about except bullies and Oedipal dynamics, these findings indicate that children's anxiety strongly reflects what is happening in the society at large. Theories of personality development may benefit by incorporating some un- derstanding that children live in the society as a whole rather than in a narrow, circumscribed world.

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/re...psp7961007.pdf

Changing economic conditions, capitalism, free markets and other aspects of modern life American conservatives have historically embraced do not explain the deterioration in adolescent mental health. It has been driven primarily by the destruction of the family unit and by extension, American communities. The author(s) generously describe this destruction as “freedom and individualism.” But then, this is the sort of degeneracy the Founders, warned about, precisely because of their commitment to those values.

We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.