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Teen mental health is showing signs of improvement, concludes a new report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2025, one-third of high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year, according to the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, released Sept. 21. That’s a 7-percentage-point decrease from 2023 (40%) and almost 10 percentage points lower than the record high in 2021 (42%).
Less than a quarter (23%) of high school students said they experienced poor mental health in 2025, compared with 29% in 2021 and 2023, the report found.
“These are hopeful signs in recent years,” said Mike Underwood, the acting division director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent Health, during a Sept. 16 press briefing about the report. “We need to keep that momentum, and we must double down to see our progress continue to expand.”
The results come as addressing the youth mental health crisis continues to be a top priority for schools. Research shows that poor mental health can hurt students’ ability to learn, their behavior, and their engagement in school.
Educators are encouraged by the 2025 results, but warn that student mental health and well-being continue to be big challenges to address.
“If you take the COVID years out, there wouldn’t be the same level of improvement noted,” said John Malloy, the senior vice president for AASA’s Center for Leadership and Learning. In 2019, the percentage of students who experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness was 37%; in 2017, it was 31.5%, according to CDC data.
“Educators would not necessarily feel as though we have supported young people to get to the place that we believe they need to be, even if the data is better than those COVID years, where clearly student mental health challenges soared at that time,” Malloy said.
The CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey report draws on survey data collected every two years from a nationally representative sample of U.S. high school students. The 2025 survey had more than 10,700 respondents. It asked students a range of questions about their well-being, including their mental health, alcohol and drug use, diet, and physical activity.
The percentages of students experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year decreased among all demographic groups when compared with the 2023 data, according to the CDC.
Still, girls and LGBTQ+ students continue to be more likely than boys to experience such feelings, report poor mental health, seriously consider attempting suicide, make a suicide plan, attempt suicide, and be injured in a suicide attempt, the report found.
Along with the downward trend in the percentage of students experiencing mental health challenges, the report also found improvements in teens’ suicide risks in 2025 when compared with 2023 results:
- 14% of teens said they seriously considered attempting suicide, down from 20% in 2023;
- 12% said they made a suicide plan, down from 16% in 2023;
- 6% said they attempted suicide, down from 9% in 2023; and
- 1% said they were injured in a suicide attempt that had to be treated by a doctor or nurse, down from 2% in 2023.
Some argue that budget cuts could jeopardize future improvements in students’ mental health
These improvements could be attributed to schools’ focused efforts to improve youth mental health, experts said. Schools have hired more school-based mental health professionals or provided more access to mental health resources, they said.
“Schools have been really cognizant of their role to pay attention to student mental health and well-being, implement strategies and create conditions for learning so students can improve in these areas, and to partner with mental health organizations, community organizations, and our parents and caregivers, so that we can help our students to be healthy,” Malloy said.
There were also increased investments from policymakers and other organizations to address the youth mental health crisis, said Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, the director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of School Psychologists.
For instance, the federal School-Based Mental Health Services Grant allowed schools to hire and retain mental health professionals, and the federal Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant allowed higher education institutions and school districts to train mental health professionals.
The work funded by these federal grants has helped reduce absenteeism and behavioral issues, lowered suicide risk, trained and hired nearly 1,300 mental health professionals, and helped schools retain a vast majority of new and existing mental health professionals, according to data from the National Association of School Psychologists.
“It is very encouraging to see the progress [in the CDC data],” Vaillancourt Strobach said. “It’s real evidence that when you make long-term, sustained investments in supporting youth mental health, we can make progress.”
But after the Trump administration prematurely ended most grants from both of those programs—and as dozens of grantees continue to fight to hold on to their funding—there are concerns about what the Youth Risk Behavior Survey data will look like in a couple years as a result of not having these resources, Vaillancourt Strobach said.
The Trump administration in April 2025 canceled more than 200 previously awarded Education Department grants for helping schools hire and train mental health professionals. The administration argues the grants conflicted with President Donald Trump’s policy priorities, including a crackdown on efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Since then, state attorneys general have twice sued to challenge the cuts. A series of court rulings has led to partial and temporary reinstatements for some grantees. However, the department has indicated it still plans to permanently discontinue the grants; a judge is expected to respond in the coming weeks. (The Education Department last December also made a new set of awards under the programs, though they were narrower in focus than the original, canceled awards.)
There is still a lot of work to be done to address student mental health, experts said.
“We have to keep that going so that we can continue to see this downward trend,” Vaillancourt Strobach said.
Schools continue to face budget shortfalls and staffing challenges, both of which make it difficult to address students’ academic and mental-health needs, experts said.
“There is no way for the districts and for schools to meet the mental health and well-being [needs] of students without the resources, which includes time and staffing, to make it happen,” Malloy said.
