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The numbers are staggering.
Nearly one in four 17-year-old boys in the United States has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In the early 1980s, a diagnosis of autism was delivered to one child in 2,500. That figure is now one in 31. Almost 32 percent of adolescents have at some point been given a diagnosis of anxiety. More than one in 10 have experienced a major depressive disorder, my colleague Jia Lynn Yang reports.
And the number of mental health conditions is expanding. A child might be tagged with oppositional defiance disorder or pathological avoidance disorder. “The track has become narrower and narrower, so a greater range of people don’t fit that track anymore,” an academic who studies children and education told Jia Lynn. “And the result is, we want to call it a disorder.”
Why did this happen? A lot of reasons. Kids spend hours on screens, cutting into their sleep, exercise and socializing — activities that can ward off anxiety and depression. Mental health screenings have improved.
And then there’s school itself: a cause of stress for many children and the very place that sends them toward a diagnosis.
A slow transformation
In 1950, less than half of American children attended kindergarten. Only about 50 percent graduated from high school. After-school hours were filled with play or work. “But as the country’s economy shifted from factories and farms to offices, being a student became a more serious matter,” Jia Lynn writes. “The outcome of your life could depend on it.” College became a reliable path to the middle class.
Schools leaned into new standards of testing and put in place measures of accountability. The No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 made it federal law.
