Around one in three youngsters in the United States have received mental health treatment in 2023, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has reported. The organization is instrumental in getting around 8.3 million adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 years to get counseling or medication.

SAMHSA's National Survey on Drug Use and Health conducted a survey to find out the situation of teenagers in the United States, and the issues they faced. The Survey found that the most common and preferred type of mental health treatment among the youth was meeting with a therapist or school counseling center.

Among adolescents, the biggest increase from 2022 was in the number getting medication for mental health treatment. According to SAMHSA, nearly 14 per cent of teenagers received a prescription last year – that is up from 12.8 per cent in 2022, even though the increase was not statistically significant.

However, officials believe even a small jump is a positive development when it comes to youngsters prioritizing their mental health. “We think it’s a good thing that more people are accessing and connecting with mental health treatment. Certainly, that has been a focus of the Biden Harris administration to make treatment more accessible, to help people know that treatment and services and supports are available,” Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use told reporters at a news briefing.

SAMHSA says the rates of adolescents getting mental health treatment have seen an upward incline every year since 2009. In 2022, the survey determined that 7.7 million or nearly 30 per cent of teenagers under the ages of 12-17 years had received mental health treatment of some kind. The rate of adolescents reporting having a major depressive episode has remained roughly flat since 2021 - at 18.1 per cent of those in the 12-17 years age bracket.

According to experts, America’s youth - who have lived through an isolating and frightening global pandemic, are growing up in an increasingly polarizing and inequitable political and social climate. They are also the first generation who have had social media access for most or all of their lives.

A report published in June 2021 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2021 outlined how emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts began increasing at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019. By March 2021, the number of these visits had increased 50.6 per cent for girls between 12-17 years old, and 3.7 percent for boys the same age.

In late 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children's Hospital Association declared a state of national emergency for what they call a “worsening crisis in child and adolescent mental health” in a joint declaration.

Experts say even though the rates of youth mental health concerns have been steadily increasing since 2010, the start of the pandemic in 2020 created less stability and safety for many, causing a drastic increase in mental health-related emergency room visits. According to mental health experts, there is not one single reason why youngsters are struggling so much more than generations prior. Instead, a perfect storm of factors that contribute include: