It is no mystery why rates of anxiety and depression in the United States climbed in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. But then life began a slow return to normal. Why haven’t rates of distress returned to normal, too?
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The share of young adults reporting anxiety and depression had been rising for about a decade before Covid struck. That continued throughout the pandemic — and did not ease as quickly when vaccines became available.
This is likely because their symptoms were tied to problems other than the virus, like economic precarity, the housing crisis, social isolation and political turmoil, said Emma Adam, a psychologist at Northwestern. “There’s so many things affecting adolescents and young adults that are about uncertainty with their future,” Adam said. “And that hasn’t changed.”