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Enjoy the stress of high school. Studies show it only gets worse later

Parents
August 30, 2024
by-
Dan Gardner

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but research by the Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education found that twice as many Gen-Z young adults (36%) felt anxiety than teenagers (18%). I’ll dive deeper into the numbers later, but the important thing to know is there are many simple things you can do right now to improve your well-being, both in the present and future.

TL;DR

The full 34-page Understanding and Preventing Young Adults’ Mental Health Challenges PDF is here. Alternatively, I’ll provide a detailed TL;DR of the report below. Frankly, the report has many redundancies, making it an unnecessarily long read.

What the numbers say: top drivers of young adults’ mental health challenges

It’s not all bad news. Gen-Z is more articulate and emotionally aware than any previous generation. Previous generations didn’t have access to the wealth of knowledge regarding mental health that Gen-Z has today. Nor the stigmatism associated with accepting mental health treatment.

Our data indicate that when it comes to meeting our pressing societal challenges, young people lack faith in older generations but have a good deal of faith in each other.Harvard Graduate School of Education
It is one thing to experience intense pressure to attend a selective college or obtain a prestigious internship; it is quite another to experience high levels of stress about meeting basic needs.On Edge.

But wait, there are more data.

* Would you prefer to be less anxious and depressed at the expense of being oblivious to the reality of the world today?

mapt_gen-z anxiety and depression by key domographics
Gen-Z’s anxiety and depression across key demographics.

mapt_gen-z top perceived drivers of their negative mental health
Gen-Z’s top perceived drives of their negative mental health.

Solutions

There are numerous options for each individual that can help reduce common stresses.

“No one I know throws their heart and soul into work anymore. Work
is just a means to an end.”23-year-old respondent

The Making Caring Common Project developed a framework to support young people in finding purpose and energizing possibilities that asks them to consider:

Young adults then explore how they might manage each of these stories in ways that enable them to move toward their ideal story. Parents and other older adults might also think about how they navigate their own stories and weave these ideas into conversations with young adults about their stories.

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