Teenage girls drove a surge in mental health hospitalizations during the pandemic
![An ambulance in St. Paul, Minn., Nov. 24, 2020. During the pandemic, the proportion of teen girls visiting emergency rooms in mental health crisis rose 22%. (TIM GRUBER/New York Times)](https://thumb.spokesman.com/uO6q6eDqVn9RLDznlEJuDvMVKgE=/600x0/media.spokesman.com/graphics/2018/07/sr-loader.png)
As the coronavirus pandemic dragged through its second year, an increasing number of American families were so desperate to get help for depressed or suicidal children that they brought them to emergency rooms.
A large-scale analysis of private insurance claims shows that this surge in acute mental health crises was driven largely by a single group – girls ages 13-17.
During the second year of the pandemic, there was a 22% increase in teenage girls who visited emergency rooms with a mental health emergency compared with a pre-pandemic baseline, with rises in patients with suicidal behavior and eating disorders, according to the study of 4.1 million patients published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry.
During the same period, March 2021 to March 2022, the records showed a 9% drop in teenage boys who made emergency room visits for mental health problems.
Overall, the proportion of young people who made an emergency room visit related to mental health increased 7% over a pre-pandemic baseline. The study was based on privately insured Americans, and it does not capture what was happening in Medicaid or uninsured households.
Though the study did not seek to explain the large gap between teen boys and girls, authors pointed to disruption of school, separation from peers and conflict at home as stressors that may have hit girls particularly hard.
“I was especially concerned that it was driven by suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior and self-harm,” said Lindsay Overhage, an author of the study and a doctoral candidate at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy.
No single explanation has emerged for the gender gap in hospitalizations for mental health emergencies, a trend that preceded the pandemic.
Research published in 2022 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found teens were heavily affected by parents’ job loss and food insecurity, with more than half of adolescents reporting emotional abuse by a parent and more than 1 in 10 reporting physical abuse. Two-thirds of students said they had difficulty completing schoolwork.
Data from Britain found these difficulties were most pronounced for older girls from poorer households, with the gap narrowing in wealthier households.