Adolescents are increasingly struggling with their mental health and seeking support online, according to a new report from Mental Health America (MHA).
The Online Screening Program offers 11 free tests for issues across the mental illness spectrum. Results are collected for studies, but participants retain anonymity and confidentiality.
More than 40% of Americans screening themselves last year were under age 18, and, for the first time, depression dropped to the second most popular test taken, after folks checking for symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
The mental health crisis is affecting attention spans and motivation among adults as well as it is for youth, MHA President and CEO Schroeder Stribling said.
She also noted that the psychosis screen rose two percentage points from 2022.
“That means that there has been an increase in the number of people who screen for psychotic disorders,” Stribling said. “So people go to the site, they take a test for psychosis. They’re concerned about their thinking, their reality testing.”
You can take a screen for depression, for ADHD, for trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, for anxiety and addiction, as well as bipolar illness or, psychosis or schizophrenia.
GO DEEPER: Read the report on MHA website.
“All of those are within the large umbrella of mental health,” Stribling said. “And within that, they all each kind of exist on a continuum.”
Psychosis is described as an accumulation of symptoms that can appear with a variety of different illnesses, in which folks have a disturbance in their thinking.
A psychotic experience may be hearing voices — auditory hallucinations — or visual. They could even be olfactory, smelling things that aren’t there.
“So having hallucinations of things that aren’t there or having delusions, in other words, beliefs of things that are real when they aren’t actually real,” she said. “Those are the hallmark symptoms of psychosis.”
This story comes to Rough Draft Atlanta through a reporting partnership with GPB News, a non-profit newsroom covering the state of Georgia.