NH Women’s Foundation Study Raises Concerns About Mental Health For Girls In NH
The New Hampshire Women's Foundation recently released a comprehensive study examining the status of girls in New Hampshire. The study delves into various factors such as education, economics, substance abuse, and safety. However, the most alarming findings were related to mental health: more than half of the girls in NH reported experiencing depression, and one in three has considered ending their own lives.
According to the Boston Globe, there was a sharp increase in depression and suicide consideration among girls in New Hampshire following the pandemic. The study found that 58 percent of girls surveyed experienced depression in 2021, the most recent year for which data was available. This marks a significant rise of 14 percentage points from 2019. Additionally, one in three girls considered suicide in 2021, compared to about one in five in 2019.
Devan Quinn, the policy director at the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation and one of the report’s authors, highlighted the disturbing decline in mental health among all youth, noting that girls are particularly affected: NH Girls are 2 times as likely as boys to experience poor mental health, depression, self-harm, and suicide consideration. She attributed the troubling increase to several factors, including the isolating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lack of school mental health supports during that time, and the impact of social media. Cyberbullying, body image issues, and the resulting lowered self-esteem and eating disorders were also identified as significant concerns, affecting a higher percentage of girls than boys.
In an opinion piece in The New York Times, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy recently advocated for social media to come with warning labels about potential health risks, akin to tobacco products. He pointed out that social media has significantly contributed to the mental health crisis among young people. The latest report from the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation, released every two years, is the first to capture the pandemic's impact on the state’s 124,000 girls, who constitute about 9 percent of the total population.
The survey, which included students from ninth through 12th grade, had 6,312 girls respond to the question about suicide and 6,515 respond to the question about depression. The data on suicidality and depression came from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, indicating a longer-term trend of increasing depression rates among girls since 2011, when 31 percent reported experiencing depression. This figure has nearly doubled over the past decade.
Despite the concerning mental health trends, the report did find some positive aspects. The poverty rate for New Hampshire girls is the lowest in the country at 7 percent, and the state also boasts the lowest teen birth rate in the nation, with 4.58 births per 1,000 teen girls. This rate has been consistently declining.
The findings underscore the urgent need for comprehensive mental health support and interventions tailored to the specific needs of girls in New Hampshire, addressing the multifaceted challenges they face in today's society.