Good News: Fewer Teens Report Depression

Did anyone see that coming?

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Apparently, teen depression has declined over the last four years.

Did anyone have that on their Bingo cards? It made me do a double take when I saw the news on Marginal Revolution, courtesy of Twitter user Chris Said.

Is it real? It seems to be. It comes via the annual Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It found that the percentage of adolescents reporting “major depressive episodes” declined from 20.8 percent in 2021 to 15.4% in 2024. That would still represent 3.8 million teens—a sobering figure—but at least the trend is moving in the right direction.

The percentage of adolescents having serious thoughts about suicide, making a suicide plan, or attempting suicide were all down as well.

So what explains the drop?

One possibility is that investments in schools—social-emotional learning programs, more guidance counselors—are starting to pay off. I’m also optimistic about the potential effects of school cellphone bans, which have spread quickly in the last few years, though the timing doesn’t quite match up with the improvements in the HHS survey.

Of course, before looking at outside causes, we should ask whether the numbers themselves might be misleading. The 2024 report had a large sample—over 70,000 participants overall, nearly 14,000 adolescents—but survey design always matters. Perhaps the teens who responded were systematically different from those who didn’t, or maybe they were less likely to endorse the survey’s diagnostic questions. As Jerusalem Demsas has asked, “Are we talking about therapy too much?”, so it’s possible we’re seeing a correction against what Derek Thompson has called the “age of diagnosis.”

There’s also a simpler story: COVID was uniquely bad for adolescents, and what we’re seeing now is a slow recovery.

Whatever the explanation, it’s worth pausing to note the good news. Teen depression rates are finally heading down.