Young adults are in a mental health crisis. Why is little being done?

America has put a particular emphasis since the pandemic on addressing an ongoing mental health and loneliness crisis, particularly among teens. While it was warranted to worry about teens, another group's struggles with depression and anxiety are essentially going unnoticed. Many young adults in the United States find the transition into adulthood daunting, as they anxiously search for a sense of purpose. And many of them are doing the transition alone.

'Young adults are more vulnerable than ever'

Young adulthood could be "a time of great growth and possibility." Still, many young adults say they feel "on edge, lonely, directionless and that they worry about financial security," said Richard Weissbourd, the faculty director of Making Caring Common, a Harvard Graduate School of Education project. 

His 2023 study found that 36% of people aged 18 to 25 reported experiencing anxiety, and 29% reported experiencing depression, about twice as many as compared to 14-to-17-year-olds on both questions. "Many are 'achieving to achieve' and find little meaning in either school or work," Weissbourd said. Nearly 60% of the cohort reported lacking "meaning or purpose" in their lives during the previous month, while half of them said their mental health was negatively influenced by "not knowing what to do with my life."

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Generation Z's young adults have had a rough, hard launch into adulthood. Many of them "launched a career or entered college amid a pandemic and turbulent economy," and now they are facing "high housing prices, a lack of connection in the workplace, world disasters, misinformation exacerbated by social media and an epidemic of loneliness across generations," said The Washington Post.

"Young adults are more vulnerable than ever," The Atlantic said, "but much of American society doesn't see them that way." Other surveys of young adults "have similarly alarming findings" as the Harvard study results. In 2020, the CDC found that depression was most prevalent among 18-to-24-year-olds and least prevalent among those 65 or older. A Gallup poll  found that loneliness was at its highest at ages 18 to 29. "Still, the struggles of young adults have gone widely unnoticed," The Atlantic added. When Weissbourd received the study's data, "it was really upsetting," he told the outlet. "What is going on here? And why aren't we talking about it more?"

'Less attention and fewer resources'

Since the pandemic, the mental health of young adults "hasn't been on our public radar in the way that teens' mental health has," said Milena Batanova, Making Caring Count's director of research and evaluation and a co-author of the report. Many young adults are tackling the unique challenges they face "with fewer resources for support than younger teens, who have multiple daily contacts with parents, caregivers, teachers and mentors in their schools," the Washington Post said. 

Overall, the "20-somethings have received less attention and fewer resources." There is a lot more that needs to be done to "support young adults' mental health and devote more resources to prevention," said Kiran Bhai, MCC's schools and parenting programs director, including "reducing the stressors that young people are facing and helping them develop the skills they need to thrive."

Older adults "need to acknowledge this crisis," Faith Hill said in The Atlantic. Recognizing young people as "worthy of empathy means understanding today's challenges." It may also mean "recalling one's own youth as it really was — and finding compassion for one's past self." It may be helpful to let young people know that even "flawed choices can lead to a life that, however imperfect, encompasses real moments of joy, accomplishment and self-knowledge." If society "romanticized that growth a little more and the golden glow of youth a little less, young adults might feel less alone in their distress," Hill added. "They might even look forward to finding out what's next."

Despite the alarming findings about young adults, there is a silver lining, MCC faculty director Weissbourd said. Teens and young adults may be "more psychologically aware and articulate than any generation in history, and more open about talking about emotional problems. For decades, people have suffered silently and terribly who have experienced depression and anxiety, and this is the generation that's talking about it."