Increase in depression and sleeping problems
Young people under 25 are reporting having sleeping problems or depression with increasing frequency. This is shown by new figures from the Dutch Central Statistical Office (CBS).
Young people still report many complaints about their mental health. Some questions they answered in 2022 were slightly more positive than a year earlier, but it is too little to speak of a trend change, CBS says.
“After the covid years, you could have hoped for an improvement,” says lead sociologist Tanja Traag, “but we do not see the expected decrease in mental problems among young people in these figures.”
Rise in corona years
In 2021, the research agency suddenly noted more mental health complaints among young people. Much more often they felt gloomy, nervous or depressed. For a long time, the percentage of young people with complaints hovered around 10 percent, in 2021 it rose to 18 percent before dropping (in Dutch) to 16 percent in 2022.
As far as bright sides go, that is it, because other problems are increasing. Since 2017, an increasing number of students say they struggled with depression in the 12 months before taking part in the survey. Among 18 to 25-year-olds, it is now 17 percent, according to CBS.
Also, 22 percent of young people have ‘quite’ or even ‘a lot’ of sleeping problems. This percentage was only 14 percent between 2017 and 2019. (HOP, OL)
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