Adolescents Report on Their Well-Being and Mental Health
Social-emotional well-being in adolescence is associated with health across the life course; it plays an important role in development and predicts academic performance and mental health outcomes later in life. Social-emotional well-being has many layers, including individual components such as stress and happiness, as well as interpersonal components such as quality and satisfaction of relationships.
In this month’s Voices of Child Health Report, we examine youth social-emotional well-being and mental health from the perspectives of adolescents and their parents. We asked 111 pairs of Chicago adolescents and their parents to report on the adolescents’ well-being and mental health.
Report Highlights
- Over half of adolescents reported that they always, often or sometimes feel stressed.
- Parents and children were only somewhat aligned in their views regarding youth mental health and stress.
- Most adolescents reported they had at least one trusted adult in their life besides a parent (93%).
Youth social-emotional well-being in Chicago
We found that over two-thirds of adolescents reported that they always, often or sometimes feel stressed (69%), though a similar proportion reported that they rarely or never felt unable to manage things in their life (69%). The majority of adolescents (53%) said they woke up feeling fresh and rested less than half of the time. Adolescents reported generally high rates of life satisfaction, with 74% saying they somewhat or strongly agreed that their life was close to ideal.
Adolescents also reported generally high levels of family relationship quality. For instance, 79% said they often or always felt important to their family, and 80% said they often or always felt they had a strong relationship with their family. We also asked adolescents if they had another adult in their life, besides a parent, whom they trusted. Most adolescents reported they had at least one trusted adult in their life besides a parent (93%). The most frequent non-parental trusted adults in adolescents’ lives were: an aunt or uncle (42%), an older sibling (39%), a grandparent (35%), a family friend (25%) and a teacher (21%) (adolescents could select more than one response).
How much do adolescents and parents agree about youth mental health?
Most parents evaluated their adolescent’s mental health similarly to their adolescent and were somewhat aligned in their ratings of adolescent well-being. This implies that parents are generally attuned to how their children are thinking and feeling. Parents with less awareness of their adolescent’s emotional distress could benefit from open dialogue with their child and creating safe spaces that support their child’s social-emotional well-being.
Youth preferences for mental health services
Adolescents were also asked about their comfort with different ways of accessing mental health services. Of our respondents, 34% said they felt extremely or somewhat comfortable with in-person appointments with a therapist, counselor or other mental health professional; 27% of adolescents said they were extremely or somewhat comfortable with each of the following: virtual appointments, meeting with the social worker in their school and going to a group therapy session with other young people in their community.
Most common mental health symptoms for adolescents
Adolescents’ most commonly experienced symptoms were worrying a lot (22%), feeling anxious or on edge (22%), feeling fidgety or unable to sit still (20%) and having trouble concentrating (18%). Youth mental health services support is paramount to maintaining youth well-being, especially considering that at least 20% of young people are facing difficulties every year.
Insights from an adolescent discussion panel
We had the privilege of partnering with 10 students in the iCAN KIDS Illinois group at Walter Payton College Preparatory High School to review the results of this research and to get their perspective on interpreting the results. In a discussion with the students, they provided several new insights on our results.
First, it was not surprising to them that few adolescents reported waking up feeling fresh and rested. The students noted that it felt odd to ask about life satisfaction because they felt they are on the path to creating the life that they hope to have, raising questions about whether they are living for the future or enjoying their journey through life as they go.
Second, they talked about stressors in adolescent life, such as schoolwork, social relationships and social media, to name a few. Students noted that our survey did not ask about social media use, so we could not examine connections between social media use and adolescent well-being. The group discussed how social media often contributes to low well-being, but that it also offers some benefits, like feeling connected to friends and learning about important issues. Students suggested that we ask more questions about social media use in future work to better understand the impact.
Finally, students were not surprised that there was not a high level of agreement between parent and adolescent reports of adolescent well-being. Specifically, students felt that parents may be motivated to see the family relationship in a more positive light.
