Research suggests half of U.S. teens have a mental disorder

By Staff Writer

According to a new study, around half of U.S. teens meet the criteria for a mental disorder and nearly one in four report having a mood, behavior or anxiety disorder that interferes with daily life. The study, which is published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, shows that 51 percent of boys and 49 percent of girls between the ages of 13 and 19 years old have a mood, behavior, anxiety or substance use disorder.

Agence France-Presse reports that the study is the first to track the prevalence of a broad range of mental disorders in a nationally representative sample of US teens. They found that nearly one-third of the teens met the criteria for the most common mental disorder among U.S. youth, which is anxiety. This class of disorder also had the earliest median onset age, occurring in children as young as six years old.