Americans’ Struggle with Mental Health

It is no mystery why rates of anxiety and depression in the United States climbed in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. But then life began a slow return to normal. Why haven’t rates of distress returned to normal, too?

Self-reported anxiety and depression have declined from the peak they reached in November 2020, when 42.6 percent of adults said they had symptoms, according to the Household Pulse Survey, a Census Bureau tool that measures well-being. Since then, that figure has declined to 20.7 percent. That’s still double the 11 percent of Americans who said the same thing before the pandemic.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why. Researchers say a big reason for this stubbornly elevated distress is young people, whose low mood was not linked to the pandemic.

A youth epidemic

The share of young adults reporting anxiety and depression had been rising for about a decade before Covid struck. That continued throughout the pandemic — and did not ease as quickly when vaccines became available.

This is likely because their symptoms were tied to problems other than the virus, like economic precarity, the housing crisis, social isolation and political turmoil, said Emma Adam, a psychologist at Northwestern. “There’s so many things affecting adolescents and young adults that are about uncertainty with their future,” Adam said. “And that hasn’t changed.”

Age, of course, tracks with income. Adam’s team found that people between the ages of 18 and 39 were half as likely to live in their own home as their counterparts over 40. That means they were especially vulnerable to inflation, rent increases and job loss — just as they faced big decisions like whether to have children or own a home.