Mental Health Challenges in Young Adults

Before commenting on the article, I want to quickly say that for the past few weeks, I have mentioned that I was looking forward to the Heart concert and what an awesome experience we had on Friday. The concert was excellent, and I’ll be writing about it and posting some of the videos on Thursday (Rockin’ Thursday). I’m still deciding which videos to include, but the post should be ready by Thursday.

As you know, this month is Mental Health Awareness Month (also referred to as Mental Health Month), which has been observed in May in the United States since 1949 and was started by Mental Health America (MHA) (then known as the National Association for Mental Health).1 Today, I want to comment on an article from the Harvard Making Caring Common Project website titled, “On Edge: Understanding and Preventing Young Adults’ Mental Health Challenges.”

The article highlights alarming rates of emotional struggles among Generation Z young adults (birth years from the mid-to-late 1990s to early 2010s), who report significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression compared to teens, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A nationally representative survey found that 36% of young adults experience anxiety and 29% experience depression, compared to 18% and 15% of teens, respectively. Young adults often feel on edge, lonely, unmoored, and financially insecure, with many finding little meaning in their achievements at school or work. Financial worries and achievement pressure negatively impact over half of the respondents, while many report a lack of purpose, relationship deficits, and a sense of societal decline affecting their mental health.

One statistic from the article that caught my attention was that over half of young adults (51%) reported that they don’t know what to do with their lives, and 58% indicated that it was either “not true” or only “a little true” that they felt a sense of “purpose or meaning in life” in the past 30 days. This particular area, in my opinion, affects all the other top perceived drivers of negative mental health presented in the article. 

One of the respondents said,

“I have no purpose or meaning in life. I just go to work, do my mundane job, go home, prepare for the next day, scroll on my phone, and repeat.”

When I was in the Army, I encountered similar responses from officers between their 6th to 10th years in service. Typically, most officers decide to make a career out of the Army (probably the same across all the services in the U.S. Department of Defense) when they reach the 10th year of service. When you discuss what their goals are at that point, most of them don’t really know. You get the typical responses about going back to school or getting a better-paying job, but when you go deeper into the discussion, these young men and women don’t really know how they are going to achieve those things, or in most cases, they are not even preparing for that transition which they want to start in a year or so.

So yes, not having purpose and meaning in life is a problem, and I can see how that can affect their mental health.

Despite those challenges, the article states that young adults also exhibit strengths, such as emotional awareness and a willingness to discuss mental health issues. They are less likely than previous generations to abuse substances and are active in addressing societal issues.

The article provides some recommendations to support these young adults:

  • Increasing access to mental health resources
  • Creating supportive relationships and fostering a sense of meaning and purpose
  • Engaging young adults in meaningful activities and providing mentorship from older generations can help address these emotional struggles
  • Practices from religious communities that provide a sense of belonging and purpose can be adapted to secular life to benefit young adults

The article was illuminating and confirmed some of my own observations about this demographic group. Still, like every other generation before them, they have the potential to be better, and I think mentorship is key. Either by finding an older man or woman willing to engage in meaningful discussions or, perhaps, like in my case, reading about men and women from the past and how they dealt with certain problems and circumstances. 

Regardless, community is what is needed in most cases.

If you want to read the article, the title of the article has a hyperlink, or you can find it here.

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Awareness_Month ↩︎

42 thoughts on “Mental Health Challenges in Young Adults”

  1. I know mental health is a real concern. My thought process is that the spiritual anchor of the word of God has been so distorted, it is hard for young adults to grasp. Models are lacking in portraying the joy of the Lord. Godliness with contentment is great gain. Now, before you shoot me, I will substantiate my point. The world’s culture is fleeting and shallow, what do they have to hold on to? Not saying all mental health difficulties are this way, many are very real. Generally speaking, I would say we would have more healthy young adults when modeling what we proclaim. I have a third child who had mental health challenges.

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    1. I consider my blog a safe space for open and respectful dialogue, so no issues here. I agree with most of your points, but from a Christian perspective, we are not helping the cause. You are right; we are not modeling good behavior that includes Godliness. Also, the Christian worldview and culture are becoming so similar to the world’s culture that they offer little help. Our Christian leaders, across all denominations, are creating a horrible environment where mental health issues are really taboo. We have pastors like John McArthur who deny the issue, stating that mental illnesses do not exist. Then we have so many instances of sexual abuse in the church and so many people suffering the emotional trauma of those abuses, and all we Christians are doing is sweeping them under the rug instead of addressing them and helping the victims. The Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic Church are examples of this. Their leaders are distorting the Word of God and not following the example of Jesus. We Christians should be loving everyone impacted by mental illnesses and confronting these bad Christian leaders who continue to commit sins and abuses against women and children. Again, there are a lot of good Christian leaders addressing this issue, but we need to clean our house first before attempting to change the world. If we do that then we can be better models and help the cause. I’m a little bit passionate about this issue, so forgive me if I went too long.

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    1. Thank you for your comments. This is an important topic that we need to continue discussing and engaging the public in, especially in the areas you mentioned: workplaces, schools, children, and adolescents.

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  5. Thanks for sharing this awesome article! 100% agree that engaging in meaningful discussions with a genuine older person surely is an amazing way to tackle this situation.

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  6. Such a great synopsis and I applaud you for bringing it up the importance of mental health and sharing your insights that are so important, Edward. Mental health numbers are staggering and the question of how to help, instill hope, finding time and words and time that are useful is not easy. I have come to a sad state internally, where I am at my threshold of what I can do and am willing to do with my own family members, godson etc. I can only do so much and as painful as it is, I have had to pull back with my plate so full. I struggle with this and I know they are ill and yet I refuse to be a doormat for their spill overs and lashing out. It’s truly one I am grabbling with and have no answers as of yet. Sitting with it is uncomfortable, doing nothing breaks my heart and yet manipulation helps no one and I see this as part of the illness as well. Help! 🌹🙏🏼

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    1. Cindy, thank you for sharing this, and I’m with you. It’s extremely hard. I personally know a few people from the Gen Z and Gen Alpha who are struggling with this issue. Like you, I don’t have many answers. We try our best, but sometimes we need to look at the bigger picture, assess the risk to our own health and those close to us, and decide if or how much we need to get involved. We definitely don’t want to get sucked into a situation that will affect our own mental health, as that will not help anybody. I think society needs to be more open about this problem, and governments, organizations, and businesses need to come up with real solutions (and resources) to help us figure this out.

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      1. You’re so very welcome and thank you for your astute awareness which leaves us in a rock and a hard place. It has to be addressed and there are a lot of programs out there. Almost so many that they are competing with each other. There is money and places to go but often people don’t want to access that for the fear of stigma and not wanting to be categorized. We did a disservice when we stopped we closed so many facilities in Regan’s time. It’s a huge dilemma. Oye vey💕

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  7. Great article! A sense of purpose is so important. As Laura said, it doesn’t need to be huge and complicated, it can be simple. Belonging to a community or having a mentor can help realize that sense of purpose – showing up for someone else, to learn, to help, to communicate, to just be there – is fulfilling a purpose. This article offers a sense of purpose by enlightening us to Gen Z challenges and possibilities, and connecting us as a community.

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    1. Thank you, Rose, for this wonderful comment. I agree with you 100% that Laura’s comments were on point and that it doesn’t need to be complicated. Like you said, just the act of showing up for someone else and providing support is all it takes.

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  9. When a human being is not “allowed” to express his or her natural creative potential in alignment with personal interests and a unique soul blueprint, there’s certainly a constraint on the life force energy that should be flowing freely through that individual. The consequences are obvious, as mentioned in your post and the article you shared. Mental and emotional issues in the first place, followed eventually by physical issues. And this is a really big societal issue. It requires us to look deeper at the root causes of such an imbalance because the situation is bigger than the massive effects already known. Thank you, Edward, for raising our awareness on the subject. Priceless, indeed! We can do better individually and as a whole. Light and blessings, my friend!  

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    1. Thank you so much, Susana. You are absolutely right about how constraining potential and life itself can result in mental, emotional, and physical problems. Providing the right kind of support without judgment is what they need.

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  10. Wow, Edward. There is so much richness in this excellent post that you touch on. You’ve made me think of finding our “why” – something that Simon Sinek and Arthur Brooks talk so much about. It’s so essential – as is community and mentors which you sagely recommend as well. Great food for thought!

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    1. Thank you so much, Wynne. The “Why” is so important, and I like Simon Sinek. I read “Leaders Eat Last,” and I have “Start with Why” and “The Infinite Game” on my reading list. He is a great guy and I’m following him on LinkedIn. He posts a lot of great content. Sometimes mentors are hard to find for some reason, so I always recommend reading as an alternative because you can learn a lot from the past.

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    2. With regard to “finding our why,” helping others has been repeatedly found to give practitioners a sense of peacefulness and fulfilment that solely self-oriented strivings do not. Hands-on volunteer work, preferably in direct connection to its recipients, is a sure cure!

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      1. Ana, you are right. Helping others and contributing to their well-being is definitely an effective way to work through some of these challenges. For me, it is extremely important when I’m going through my “downs” to realize that there are others depending on me, and that I need to engage with them and stay in community. Depression, for example, can take a person to some dark places, so finding that “why” and having a purpose can help. I know this is not the solution for every case because mental illnesses are super complicated, and there is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but staying away from isolation is one way to fight back, and helping others is one path to stay afloat.

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  12. There are some very good points in here but the one that sticks out is the very end, community and more engagement with the public. Thanx for another interesting post and am looking forward to the Heart review.

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  13. Wonderful initiative and definitely cause for concern…especially the worries I have about Gen Z and paralyzing achievement pressure. It’s a thing…it’s a thing. Thanks, Edward.

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  14. Love, love, love that you brought awareness to this! Mental health is very close to my heart, working in the psychiatric field. It affects so many of us everyday, in so many different age ranges. As you so noted in your experiences with others during the time you served, this:
    “I have no purpose or meaning in life. I just go to work, do my mundane job, go home, prepare for the next day, scroll on my phone, and repeat.”
    is what really affects people.

    And how can you blame them?
    People get mad at me sometimes when I talk about having a purpose, but they sometimes miss the bigger picture. You have a purpose if you’ve ever written something and touched someone’s heart. You have a purpose if you were kind to someone who maybe didn’t deserve it, because you never know what last straw they were on. You have a purpose if you are a parent. You have a purpose if you are a great friend. And on it goes.

    It’s just important to have awareness and recognize those aspects of ourselves, no matter how big or small.

    Sorry for the novel 😊

    Also, so glad you enjoyed the concert! 🙏

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    1. What a great comment, Laura. Thank you for that. You are so right, and what you said about having purpose and the examples you gave are excellent. Purpose doesn’t need to be complicated, and what you said is on point. Again, thank you so much and I love your novel.

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