CDC youth survey finds mental-health gains, but one in three still reports prolonged sadness
The share of U.S. high-school students reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness fell from 40% in 2023 to 33% in 2025, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's newly released survey. Serious consideration of suicide fell from 20% to 14% over the same two survey years. These are improvements in what students reported, but the 2025 result still means roughly one in three reported prolonged sadness or hopelessness during the previous year.
The longer view is less reassuring. The CDC's mental-health trend charts put that sadness measure at 30% in 2015. Its 2025 level is below the 2021 and 2023 peaks but above the level a decade earlier. The agency classifies the two-year change as an improvement and the ten-year trend as a worsening. Neither description alone captures both timescales.
Gains did not reach every measure
The survey also found that the share reporting poor mental health fell from 29% to 23% between 2023 and 2025. The share reporting a suicide attempt fell from 9% to 6%. The CDC says five of six mental-health and suicide-risk indicators improved over those two years; the measure of an attempt requiring treatment by a doctor or nurse did not show a two-year change. These are distinct questions and percentages, not interchangeable measures of a single diagnosis.
Differences within the 2025 sample remain large. The CDC reports persistent sadness or hopelessness among 43% of female students and 24% of male students. Those are survey categories and population estimates; they cannot tell a reader why an individual student is struggling or whether any particular policy caused the change.
The broader Youth Health in Focus release also reports more students eating fruit and vegetables daily and joining a sports team. Yet only 24% said they slept at least eight hours on an average school night, essentially unchanged from 2023. Progress in one measure should not be read as progress across every part of adolescent health.
What the survey can and cannot establish
The CDC's technical notes describe an anonymous, voluntary, school-based survey. After data checks, 10,710 questionnaires from 108 schools were usable in 2025. The overall response rate was 30.6%. The CDC weights responses for national estimates of students in grades 9–12 attending public and private schools; teenagers outside that school population are not represented by the survey's stated target population. Weighting addresses measured differences in participation, but it cannot prove that nonrespondents had the same experiences as respondents.
These are repeated cross-sectional surveys, not records following the same students over time. They show a change in reported prevalence between survey years; they do not identify a cause. For schools and families, the practical finding is both the improvement and the remaining need: fewer surveyed students reported several serious difficulties, while substantial numbers still did.