Inside the Mental Health Decline of Young Women

Recent reports from the CDC show that young people’s mental health continues to worsen. Young women, in particular, fare far worse in many issues, experiencing unprecedented levels of sadness and hopelessness, along with sexual violence. 

Mental health is a nuanced, multifaceted topic, but one thing is clear. As girls age, they need support to navigate these challenges. 

Conversations in Season One of Inside the Mayo Lab podcast, produced powerful insights on this critical issue—and takeaways on how to address it.

1. Social media’s influence on mental health is undeniable. 

In the first episode of Inside the Mayo Lab, Dr. Meagen Rosenthal, interim executive director of The Mayo Lab, talked about the lab’s approach to the current mental health and substance abuse crisis. 

During the conversation, Alexis Lee, program manager of The Mayo Lab, underscored the role social media plays in young women’s mental health. “The comparison game of whatever you see everyone else doing…You’re consistently held up against each other,” Lee said. 

As a solution, Rosenthal noted the advantages of teaching young women to follow their own version of success, a radical antithesis to social media’s lessons. 

”You don’t have to be my version of success,” she said. 

2. Our response must fit today’s unique challenges and opportunities.

In the same episode, Rosenthal spoke about the K-12 pilot programs The Mayo Lab hopes to build in schools, aimed at providing students with the skills and understanding needed to tackle the problems of today. She explained how programs built to address the difficulties facing young women today should be informed by what their lives look like. 

“I think the program will have to be tailorable to all of these different populations of young people that we have in our schools,” Rosenthal said. “So what works for young women and works for young men and works for transgender people is going to be different by necessity. They're facing a different version of the society in which we live.”

Adults, particularly parents, are passionate about taking care of their young people, but in order to craft a program—or even a conversation—that will truly combat young women’s issues, they must consider how it can adapt and fit young women’s lives.

3. Fear can influence young women to make decisions that don’t align with their values.

In the fourth episode of Inside the Mayo Lab, host David Magee recounted a moment with a young woman, in which she said to him, “If I remove myself in the conversation [with peers], I feel like it will go to a place that it may turn on me. I'm not comfortable not being present, because I'm not sure what they’re going to say about me.”

The “fear of missing out,” being different and being spoken about, has the capacity to drive young women to change their behavior—an issue Rosenthal attributed in part to social media. Solving the problem, however, is difficult. 

“There’s a lot more work that needs to be done in that space,” Rosenthal shared.

The job of adults is to model better actions, better responses. 

“Because our young people, and we’ve talked about this before on here,” Rosenthal said, “are watching us—Watching us so closely every single day as examples of how to be in the world.”