Anxiety continues to be a common struggle for adolescents, according to the report Key Substance Use and Mental Health Indicators in the United States: Results from the 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released in 2025 by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
The report covers topics related to substance use and mental health conditions for the years of 2021 through 2024 to aid policymakers, clinicians and the public in understanding behavioral health trends across the nation.
In 2024, about one in five young people aged 12-17 reported experiencing moderate or severe symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in the past two weeks. “Symptoms of GAD include feeling nervous or on edge, excessively worrying about different things, having difficulty controlling thoughts of worry, having trouble relaxing, being restless, feeling irritable, and feeling that something awful might happen,” the report states. One in four had mild symptoms.
For the age group, 15.4 percent or 3.8 million individuals had a major depressive episode (MDE) in the last year. “An estimated 11.3 percent of adolescents in 2024 (or 2.8 million people) had a past year MDE with severe impairment,” according to the report.
Data for 2024 showed that 2.6 million adolescents had serious thoughts of suicide in the last year (down from 3.4 million in 2021), with 1.2 million adolescents making a suicide plan (down from 1.6 million in 2021) and 700,000 attempting suicide (down from 940,000 in 2021).
“In 2024, 28.5 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 (or 7.4 million people) received mental health treatment,” according to the report. Outpatient treatment was the most common among respondents (21.3 percent), followed by telehealth treatment (13.1 percent) and prescription medication (12.9 percent).
Substance use
“Among people aged 12 to 20 in 2024, 11.7 percent (or 4.5 million people) used tobacco products or used an e-cigarette or other vaping device to vape nicotine in the past month,” according to the report. “Among people in this age group, 10.4 percent (or 4 million people) vaped nicotine, and 4.3 percent (or 1.7 million people) used tobacco products, including 3 percent (or 1.2 million people) who smoked cigarettes in the past month.”
About 13.3 percent of 5.1 million youth aged 12-20 had used alcohol in the past month (down from 15.6 percent of 6.1 million people in 2021) and 7.6 percent of underage people had participated in binge drinking.
Results indicated that roughly one in 20 adolescents had used marijuana in the past month in 2024. Vaping marijuana was the most common way it was consumed among the age group. More than one in 10 adolescents has used illicit drugs (including marijuana) in the past year.
Additionally, according to the report, “among people aged 12 or older in 2024, 0.3 percent (or 816,000 people) misused fentanyl in the past year, including 0.2 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17.”
