CDC Reporting on the Mental Health of Girls in the U.S.
February 13, 2023
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This post is slightly unrelated (but probably only slightly) to what I typically write about, but I couldn’t ignore this story.
Today this story about a recent CDC study concerning the mental well-being of young people in America came across my Twitter feed. The conclusions that the CDC reached were alarming. As reported,
Sexual attacks and other traumatic experiences have led to an unprecedented level of hopelessness and suicidal thoughts among America's young women, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday.
"Our teenage girls are suffering through an overwhelming wave of violence and trauma, and it’s affecting their mental health," said Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health.
Results from the CDC's 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey show startling trends. Nearly 3 in 5 teen girls (57%) said they felt "persistently sad or hopeless." That's the highest rate in a decade. And 30% said they have seriously considered dying by suicide — a percentage that's risen by nearly 60% over the past 10 years.
"The numbers are unprecedented," Ethier said.
The report mentions, as an example, this heartbreaking story from earlier this month, in which a 14-year-old girl was beaten in her high school’s hallway, and then a video of the beating was posted on social media, tagging her. She believed that the intent behind the post and the tag was to embarrass and bully her. A few days later, she killed herself as a result, and four teens have been indefinitely suspended from school and charged (their names are being withheld because they are minors). Advocates for the girl, including her father, say that school officials did not do enough to address the behavior of the alleged perpetrators.
Her name was Adriana Kuch and this is her.
Photo credit: NBC News
The article reporting on the CDC study also contains this:
At least 52% of teenagers who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or questioning said they struggled with mental health. (The survey did not ask whether a person was transgender.)
It does not break that 52% statistic down further by sex.
I do not doubt for an instant that being constantly subjected to sexual and physical violence, whether in the media, pornography, or in real life, contributes to this decline in the mental well-being of young women and girls. I know that when I was a teenage girl, being subjected to such imagery and treatment was hard. I also know that things are much much harder for today’s teenage girls.
I have to wonder, though, how much of this decline in mental well-being among lesbian, gay, and bisexual young people comes from being told that if they are same-sex attracted, then they are actually the opposite sex, and from the encouragement to “transition” that inevitably follows.
The CDC’s proposed solution is “more programs in schools, such as sex ed, to address the ongoing and growing mental health crisis.” I would argue that programs in schools are great, provided that such programs do not indoctrinate children into thinking that they can be either sex, but I’m not hopeful. I would much rather see government and school officials address the public health crisis that pornography is, as the group Culture Reframed encourages, and stop lying about the material reality of sex.
Our society is failing our children in so many ways. In particular, young women who are exploring same-sex attraction get hit from all directions: from a media landscape that objectifies them, to boys who harass them, to a medical industry that wants to “trans” them.
We had better turn this ship around, and quickly.