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Mental health symptoms and suicide risk among American high schoolers improved in 2025 compared to two years prior. That's according to the latest report from the national Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) every two years.
The new report, which primarily highlights students' diets, physical activity and sleep, found improvements in the number of students who ate fruits and vegetables compared to the previous survey. While there was not much improvement in levels of physical activity, more students reported playing on a sports team compared to in 2023.
"We see in this report that our children are eating healthier, engaging in team sports, and experiencing fewer feelings of sadness and hopelessness," said Dr. Jennifer Shuford, CDC's Deputy Director and Chief Medical Officer at a press conference held last week to announce the report's findings. "This is good news for kids, for us, and for our country. The focus here is clear: healthier youth today, healthier adults tomorrow."
The survey, commonly known as the YRBS, has been running for more than 35 years. This year's report differs from previous years' which emphasized the dangers teens face from drugs, alcohol and sex. While the 2025 survey collected a range of information, the report highlights topics important to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his MAHA – Make America Healthy Again – movement. It talks about nutrition, exercise, sleep, screen time and mental health while leaving out things like teen smoking and vaping and exposure to violence.
It also leaves out discussion of health disparities among ethnic groups, which was a feature of past reports.
Improvements in youth mental health
In 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health.
"After the pandemic, we had our all time high of suicide attempts and ideation and visits to the ER with suicidality," says child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Vera Feuer, Chief Clinical Officer at the Child Mind Institute.
But the new report, which also presents trends over the past decade, shows a decline in suicidal thinking and behaviors, which initially showed up in the 2023 YRBS data. This year's report finds that levels of persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness among high schoolers have fallen in recent years – from 42% in 2021, to 40% in 2023 and 33% in 2025.
Similarly, the number of students who seriously considered suicide fell from 22% in 2021 to 14% in 2025. The number who made a suicide plan (which ups the risk of attempting suicide) also fell from 18% in 2021 to 12% in 2025.
While these percentages still represent large numbers of teens, the latest findings are "encouraging," adds Feuer.
"What we're seeing is that since 2021, there's actually been a really nice improvement in many mental health indicators for young people," says pediatrician Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent medicine at Mass General Brigham for Children in Boston. "I think that's a cause for optimism."
New emphasis on health and wellness
However, the new report stands apart from past years' reports in what's highlighted as well as what's not, says Hadland, who is part of the team that administers the survey in Massachusetts. The survey questions haven't changed but what the report emphasizes or omits has.
"There is a real emphasis on health and wellness," says Hadland. "And look, that's very important."
The highlights in the new report "align with the Make America Healthy Again initiative led by President Trump and Secretary Kennedy – who are committed to preventing chronic disease across our country, especially in our nation's youth," Shuford said at last week's press conference.
Missing pieces
But other factors that are also important in the health and wellbeing of the country's youth are missing in the report, says Hadland.
"As somebody who looks at this report every year, it really stood out to me that we were missing rich data on what's going on with substance use with young people," he says. In past years, the survey captured both positive trends – decline in smoking – as well as more troubling ones – rise in vaping in recent years, he explains.
Similarly, the new report is also missing information on sexual behaviors among teens, as well as their exposure to firearms and other forms of violence, which featured prominently in past reports. Guns, for example, remain the leading cause of death among children and teens in this country.
Another piece of data that's missing in the new report, says Feuer, is how connected students feel in their school.
"School connectedness and kids feeling like they belong in schools and that adults and children in schools care about them is a really important protective factor for mental health," she says.
The report also omits any mention of LGBTQ+ youth and has fewer details based on race and ethnicity of students, note both Feuer and Hadland.
"The extent to which we could observe health inequities by race and ethnicity and then by membership in the LGBTQIA+ community were really much more absent in this report," says Hadland.
"There are significant disparities when we look at behaviors among different groups of students," acknowledged Mike Underwood, acting director of the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health, in response to a reporter's question about data on LGBTQ youth.
He said that data was collected and is available on the YRBS website for anyone to look up.
"We encourage states and communities to go and look through their data," he said.
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