Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

'An urgent and difficult message': 59% of Wisconsin youth feel anxious, depressed or suicidal

Natalie Eilbert, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Updated
7 min read

If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text "Hopeline" to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

MADISON – The first words out of state Superintendent Jill Underly's mouth about the release of Wisconsin's youth mental health survey were "I wish I had better news to share."

And indeed, the Wisconsin Youth Risk Behavior Survey data presented at Tuesday's press conference were grim.

Advertisement
Advertisement

"Unfortunately, I'm here to share with you today and deliver an urgent and difficult message: our youth are in an alarming and profound mental health crisis, and we must unite to take immediate action," Underly said.

In its second survey since the pandemic, the Department of Public Instruction continued to ring alarm bells about the persistence of anxiety, depression and suicide among Wisconsin's teenagers. None of the concerning numbers expressed in 2021 has gone down.

Six out of every 10 Wisconsin high schoolers reported they felt anxious, depressed or suicidal each day, according to the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey out of Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Six out of every 10 Wisconsin high schoolers reported they felt anxious, depressed or suicidal each day, according to the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey out of Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Anxiety, which spiked to more than half of all teenagers in 2021, remained the same for 2023's report.

There's been a gradual climb in anxiety since the Youth Risk Behavior Survey added a new question about it in 2017. In 2017, about 40% of Wisconsin high school students said they had significant problems feeling anxious, nervous, tense, scared or like something bad was going to happen in the past 12 months. It rose to 49% in 2019, 52% in 2021 and has remained at that level.

Advertisement
Advertisement

"The scale of this student mental health crisis is immense. Fifty-nine percent of Wisconsin high school students who took the Youth Risk Behavior Survey last year told us that they dealt with at least one mental health challenge within the past year," Underly said. "Think about that for a second. Almost six out of every 10 Wisconsin high schoolers are telling us that they feel anxious, depressed or suicidal each day."

Some of the most urgent results of the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey present a fracturing picture of girlhood; the surging rates of distress among students who identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual; and the diminishing sense of belonging and connectedness at school.

Some respondents were asked to offer open-ended feedback. Though anonymous, the responses serve as the tenor of this troubling moment. Youth talked about the number of times they encounter vaping in bathrooms, the need to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, bullying and lack of safety for LGBTQ+ students.

One comment addressed the toxic tools their generation has inherited: "We are rapidly becoming the most depressed and zombied age group of all … The technology you have built has given us more self-hatred, unachievable expectations, new mental illnesses and has crushed our sense of communication … Please understand that we are trying our best to find ourselves and it is difficult when the world that we look up to can be so cruel, and we feel we need to go through it alone … "

Advertisement
Advertisement

"Mental health outcomes tend to improve when school belonging improves," said Amy Marsman, senior research analyst for the Wisconsin Office of Children's Mental Health. "Unfortunately, belonging and connectedness have declined in Wisconsin by a lot, 17 percentage points in seven years. That's the bad news."

In addition to girls, students of color, students who receive special education, and students with individualized education plans (IEPs) are among those who are struggling more than their peers, said Casie Sulzle, the Youth Risk Behavioral Survey coordinator for the Department of Public Instruction.

All this has had a compounding effect. Not since 2003 have more youth seriously considered suicide than in 2023, a thought that currently plagues 19% of Wisconsin teenagers.

'Our girls are in trouble'

While anxiety impacted more than half of all students, at 52%, two-thirds of all Wisconsin girls reported they experienced anxiety. Nearly half of girls reported depression, at 45%. And a third of girls reported being bullied, either on school property or online.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Girls are also twice as likely to hurt themselves than boys. Along these same lines, girls seriously considered suicide and attempted suicide nearly twice as much as boys in the last 12 months.

"Our girls are in trouble," Marsman said.

Girls were also three times more likely to report experiencing sexual assault than boys, which amounts to nearly one in five high school girls. More than half of all students reporting sexual assault or coercion said it happened more than once in their lifetimes. Nearly one in five girls also reported sexual violence from their intimate partner.

Students who experienced sexual assault report far higher rates of mental health distress. They're more than three times likely to seriously consider suicide and six times more likely to have attempted suicide than those who have not had such experiences, according to the report.

Advertisement
Advertisement

More than 9% of Wisconsin students said they were raped in this year's report, defined as being forced to have sexual intercourse, with girls more likely to report their rape than boys (nearly 14% of girls reported; nearly 5% of boys did). The rate of rape has not changed since 2021.

Lesbian, gay and bisexual students experienced 'startling' rates of mental health struggles

Students who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual experienced "startling rates" of anxiety, depression and anxiety, Marsman said.

Forty percent of these students seriously considered suicide in the last 12 months, compared with 12% of heterosexual/straight students. Just 14% of these students "mostly or always get help."

Generally, that's been the downward trend across all students in Wisconsin. In 2017, 28% of students who seriously considered suicide could mostly or always get help, but by 2023, just 21% of students felt that way.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Bullying remains a higher concern for lesbian, gay or bisexual students, who experienced bullying at twice the rate of heterosexual/straight students. These students were much more likely to report that bullying is a problem at school.

Like high school girls, students who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual also reported experiencing higher rates of sexual assault than other groups, at nearly 30%. That makes them more than three times more likely to experience sexual assault than heterosexual/straight students.

Students of color don't feel safe at school

Although a majority of students reported feeling safe at school, that number dropped from 80% in 2021 to nearly 75% in 2023. And more students reported this year they rarely or never feel safe at school — increasing from 10% in 2013 to nearly 14% last year.

Students of color were more likely than white students to report not feeling safe at school. Black students and multiracial students were the most likely to report feeling unsafe at school, at 21% and 22%, respectively. By comparison, 11% of white students reported this way.

Advertisement
Advertisement

In fact, Black students were nearly three times more likely to skip school altogether than white students for safety reasons.

Threats and injuries at school have more than doubled in the last decade. At the same time, dangers at home have also increased, especially for students of color.

While 90% of white students reported having their basic needs met most of the time or always by an adult, just 77% of Black students could say the same.

"These kids carry with them an incredible burden, and the data is even more acute for marginalized students," Underly said.

About the Youth Risk Behavior Survey

Since 1993, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey has been administered every two years to students in grades ninth through 12th from a sample of public, charter and alternative high schools in Wisconsin.

Advertisement
Advertisement

In the spring of 2023, 1,882 students from 42 high schools voluntarily participated in the survey. Another 200,000 students from 750 schools from grades sixth through 12th participated at the local level. The 2023 questionnaire included 89 questions in total. The national results for 2023 have not yet published.

Two questions were added to the 2023 survey regarding social media use and feelings of mistreatment due to race or ethnicity. The answers were broken up along the lines of economic factors (access to food), special education, sex and race or ethnicity.

Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at [email protected] or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin youth mental health: 59% feel anxious, depressed, suicidal

Solve the daily Crossword

The daily Crossword was played 11,212 times last week. Can you solve it faster than others?
CrosswordCrossword
Crossword
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement