Results from the CDC’s 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey showed startling trends. Nearly three in five teen girls (57%) stated they felt “persistently sad or hopeless”. That is 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 survey, which has been conducted every other year for three decades, includes responses from 17,232 U.S. high school students.

Overall, more than 40% of boys and girls said that they’d felt so sad or hopeless within the past year that they were unable to do their regular activities, such as schoolwork or sports, for at least two weeks.

When researchers looked at gender differences, girls were far more likely to report such feelings than boys.

The CDC survey found that more than 1 in 5 such youth — 22% — had attempted suicide within the past year.

14% asserted they had been forced to have sex, representing an increase of 11% of teen girls who said they had been sexually attacked in 2019, it said.

“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.

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.)

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