The mental health of young people in the Netherlands deteriorated last year. In 2021, about 18 percent of 12 to 25-year-olds were psychologically unhealthy. In 2019 and 2020 this was still 11 percent. This is evident from a Wednesday published health survey of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Young people more often felt gloomy, unhappy and restless. CBS suspects that the corona crisis has worsened the mental state of young people.
Girls and young women in particular suffer from poorer mental health, according to the figures from Statistics Netherlands. Last year, nearly a quarter of young women were psychologically unhealthy, compared to nearly 12 percent of young men. Young adults have also deteriorated more severely in recent years compared to teenagers under the age of eighteen.
Statistics Netherlands measured the mental health of young people by asking five questions about their state of mind over a period of four weeks. To questions such as “did you feel depressed and gloomy?” or “were you so down that nothing could cheer you up?” youths were able to give six answers ranging from “never” to “always.” This resulted in a total score of between zero (very unhealthy) and one hundred (prefectly healthy) points. Those with a score of less than sixty points are considered psychologically unhealthy by Statistics Netherlands.
About one in five young people said they almost never feel calm or calm. About 13 percent often, or sometimes even continuously, felt gloomy and depressed. Also, 20 percent rarely felt happy, the figures show.
Negative influence corona time
It is not the first study to show that young people in the Netherlands experience more and more stress and feel more unhappy. The RIVM wrote last month that one in five Dutch young people had “sometimes serious suicidal thoughts” last winter. GPs saw the number of reports of suicide (attempts) increase compared to before the corona pandemic.
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Although the survey cannot establish a direct link between the mental state of young people and the corona crisis, CBS points to previous studies that showed that the lockdowns as a result of the corona measures have indeed had a negative effect on the well-being of the population. youth. Nearly half of young people said at the beginning of 2021 that the corona crisis is their life negatively affected† Another survey from the statistics office from September last year found that a quarter of young adults felt gloomy, unhappy and lonely in the corona time.