Today, the Sutton Trust has published a major new report highlighting the ongoing mental health crisis affecting young people in England. It should serve as a wake-up call to policymakers and educators.
Alongside our research partners behind this COSMO study, we’ve surveyed 11,000 young people who have just taken their A Levels, of whom over 3,000 were studying at either an FE college or a sixth form college. Overall, we found that 44 per cent could be classified as experiencing high psychological distress.
This reinforces the alarming trend that the mental health of the current generation is worse than that of previous generations. We had picked up similar results this time last year, and it’s worrying to see these figures remain stubbornly high, indicating that the pandemic’s effects are anything but short-term. The numbers are also considerably higher than the 35 per cent experiencing high psychological distress at the same age in a similar study carried out in 2017, and the 23 per cent found in a 2007 study.
Most worryingly, those in the most deprived parts of the country were 11 percentage points more likely to say they are still waiting for the support they applied for, at 39 per cent compared to 28 per cent of those in the most affluent areas. And when it comes to specialist services, those in the most deprived areas were more than twice as likely to have not received support as the most affluent.
