Good morning. Today, we're covering the mental health struggles of young people — as well as the 2024 campaigns, Taylor Swift and artistic swimming.
A national struggle
It is no mystery why rates of anxiety and depression in the United States climbed in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. But then life began a slow return to normal. Why haven't rates of distress returned to normal, too? Self-reported anxiety and depression have declined from the peak they reached in November 2020, when 42.6 percent of adults said they had symptoms, according to the Household Pulse Survey, a Census Bureau tool that measures well-being. Since then, that figure has declined to 20.7 percent. That's still double the 11 percent of Americans who said the same thing before the pandemic. In today's newsletter, I'll explain why. Researchers say a big reason for this stubbornly elevated distress is young people, whose low mood was not linked to the pandemic. A youth epidemicThe share of young adults reporting anxiety and depression had been rising for about a decade before Covid struck. That continued throughout the pandemic — and did not ease as quickly when vaccines became available. This is likely because their symptoms were tied to problems other than the virus, like economic precarity, the housing crisis, social isolation and political turmoil, said Emma Adam, a psychologist at Northwestern. "There's so many things affecting adolescents and young adults that are about uncertainty with their future," Adam said. "And that hasn't changed." Age, of course, tracks with income. Adam's team found that people between the ages of 18 and 39 were half as likely to live in their own home as their counterparts over 40. That means they were especially vulnerable to inflation, rent increases and job loss — just as they faced big decisions like whether to have children or own a home. But it wasn't just about the economy. Researchers at Johns Hopkins found measurable declines in mood after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that abolished the federal right to abortion. Women in states where abortion bans took effect had reported more anxiety and depression compared with counterparts in other states. There was no such difference for men. Even though politics, law and the economy affect everyone, the young may pay more attention to social conditions, said Ludmila Nunes, who tracks research for the American Psychological Association. So they are both more exposed to the consequences and more aware of them. "These events affect them more than older people," Nunes said. "So it's normal that they are going to respond more." The older, the happierThe good news is, by some measures, distress is gradually declining. In November 2020, when vaccines were announced, "we see what almost looks like an exhale" among people in midlife or older, said Sarah Collier Villaume, another researcher at Northwestern. There are various ways to measure mental distress, and not all of them reflect that exhale. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a national survey conducted by the C.D.C. that asks subjects how many days of poor mental health they experience per month, shows an unbroken upward trend. But that metric, too, shows that age boosts mental health. While older people show declines in attention and memory, they seem to gain more control over their emotions. Some research suggests that older people learn to focus more on positive memories — or what one team of psychologists called "emotionally gratifying memory distortion" regarding the past. Researchers at Boston College set out to test this hypothesis by surveying people between the ages of 18 and 80 about their memories from the early part of the pandemic. They found something paradoxical: The older their subjects were, the more positive memories they had of the pandemic, even though they were physically more at risk. This puts young people at a disadvantage when facing traumatic events. And if their stress was driven by economic and political uncertainty, rather than fear of illness, then there is no reason to expect it to recede. Adam said her best guess is that older Americans would continue to recover faster than younger ones. "We can't answer the fundamental question" of when, and if, Americans' moods will return to a prepandemic norm, "except to predict very strongly that the age disparities will still be there," she said. More on mental health: A psychiatrist livestreamed a conversation with a troubled video game champion. Did that cross an ethical line?
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Artistic swimming: The U.S. team won its first medal in 20 years, taking silver in a field that lacked Russia. The athletes in the sport are demanding more respect. Track and field: Quincy Hall snapped an American drought in the men's 400 meters, shocking the fastest Olympic field ever with a comeback win. Final results: U.S. figure skaters received their gold medals for the team event at the 2022 Beijing Olympics after a 912-day delay. They weren't the only athletes being awarded belated medals. Women's basketball: The Americans routed Nigeria, 88-74, in the quarterfinals. Next up? A familiar Australian team.
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