- A CDC study revealed that more than half of high school students said they were cursed or verbally insulted during the pandemic.
- This study also revealed that American teens have mental health problems.
- It’s unclear how much pandemic-related lockdown influenced the responses.
According to The Guardian, more than half (50%) of American teens claimed they suffered from emotional abuse at home during the pandemic. DataThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collected the data.
“These data echo a cry for help,”Dr. Debra Houry, acting principal deputydirector at the CDC, stated NBC News. “The COVID-19 pandemic has created traumatic stressors that have the potential to further erode students’ mental wellbeing.”
Based on responses from 7,705 high-school students across the country, the CDC’s findings have been published in several reports.
The survey found that 66% of students had difficulty finishing school work, 55% reported being cursed at or verbally injected by their parents, and 11.3% claimed they had suffered physical abuse.
The report also found that 44% of the students said they experienced hopelessness during the past year — making it difficult for them to carry out daily functions — and almost 20% said they contemplated committing suicide.
“Our data make it clear that young people experienced significant disruption and adversity during the pandemic and are experiencing a mental health crisis,”Kathleen Ethier was the Director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health. She spoke to reporters Thursday.
It’s unclear how the lockdown that was caused by the pandemic affected the study’s conclusions.
Previous CDC StudyData released in February showed that American teenagers were experiencing increasing mental health problems in the years between 2013-2019 and the onset in 2020 of the pandemic.