In case you’re still reading, here are some statistical findings on the report:

“Scholars at the National Research Council in 2002 estimated that at least one of every four adolescents in the U.S. is currently at serious risk of not achieving productive adulthood.” (i.e., they will end up institutionalized, mental or penal, or worse)

“According to a recent study, about 21 percent of U.S. children ages nine to 17  have a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder associated with at least minimum impairment. These high numbers appear to reflect actual increases in these problems, not changes in methods or rates of treatment.”

“Despite increased ability to treat depression, the current generation of young people is more likely to be depressed and anxious than was its parent’s generation.”

“By the 1980s, U.S. children as a group were reporting more anxiety than did children who were psychiatric patients in the 1950s. 

“Several studies have found that an estimated eight percent of U.S. high school students suffer from clinical depression.”

“About 20 percent of students report having seriously considered suicide in the past year.” (12)

“A recent study of mental health problems among college students at a large 

Midwestern university finds that, over the past 13 years, the number of students being clinically seen for depression doubled; the number of suicidal students tripled; and

 the number of students seen after a sexual assault quadrupled.”

“Since the 1950s, death rates among U.S. young people due to unintentional injuries, cancer, and heart disease have all fallen by about 50 percent.  Death rates overall have dropped by about 53 percent…but during this same period, homicide death rates among U.S. youth rose by more than 130 percent.”

“Suicide rates – the third leading cause of death among U.S. young people, and famously recognized more than a century ago by Emile Durkheim, one of the fathers of modern sociology, as a key indicator of socialconnectedness – rose by nearly 140 percent. More and more, what is harming and killing our children today is mental illness, emotional distress, and behavioral problems.”

 

Thoughts?

So, what does that mean for those of us who work with/minister to students?