CDC survey links youth mental health to school safety and more

Many young people, including those from marginalized groups, say their mental well-being is tied to feeling safe and supported in their environments, according to the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey from the CDC.

Doctor Kathleen Ethier, who directs the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, said this adds to a more robust picture of where youth mental health is trending.

“Young people who experience racism in school,” said Ethier, “or young people who experience unfair discipline at school are more likely to experience poor mental health than, on the other hand, young people who feel close to others at school and so feel that sense of school connectedness.”

Using the survey as a tool to listen directly to young people about recent mental health trends, she explained, was key to why the CDC added new questions about social media.

“We were so hopeful to see that we were showing the first glimmers of improvement in depressive symptoms and for some of the other groups,” Ethier said.

The survey, she said, pulls double duty by looking at what worsens mental health, while also identifying ways to support young people at home, school, and online.

“Adversity in childhood is a pretty robust risk factor,” said Jinni Su, an assistant professor with Arizona State University’s Psychology Department, on the development of behaviors like alcohol misuse.

Her research, she said, shows the need for a broader approach to steer adolescents away from risk-heavy environments, especially ones that can trigger certain behaviors tied to genetic predispositions.

“We need to look through nuance and pay attention to our unique combination of genetic and environmental profiles to really understand our risk and resilience and where those lie,” said Su.

Ethier says it can begin with collaborating on habits like “getting enough sleep, participating in physical activity, reducing the amount of social media use, making sure that young people eat breakfast.”

Which she added is a major part of helping set young people up for better outcomes later in life.

Assistant professor Thao Ha, also with ASU’s Psychology Department, said it’s important to recognize how much social and emotional development happens online for those considered "digital natives" as well.

“Your child spends more time online than on any other activity,” said Ha. “[More] than in school, than on sleep, on eating, exercising – the time spent online is more than all of those things separately.”

But she explained recognizing the weight of these online interactions is crucial.

“The type of things that they're doing, who they're interacting with that is more important than the total screen time,” said Ha. “They're also developing their identities through interactions online, so there's a lot of positive things happening. There's, at the same time, harmful things happening such as digital dating abuse. And those are the contexts that we need to understand better how it's affecting our youth.”

Ha said recognizing and setting clear boundaries around online activity could be pivotal to unlocking best practices for supporting young people’s mental health moving forward.