Anxiety among US young adults kept climbing after 2020

Using nationally representative National Health Interview Survey data on 10,953 US adults aged 18 to 25, researchers compared 2024 with 2020. The odds of reporting an anxiety diagnosis were 31 percent higher, anxiety medication use 32 percent higher, and frequent anxiety 28 percent higher.

A common assumption is that the mental health spike among young people was a pandemic blip that would settle down. This study tested that using the National Health Interview Survey, an annual federal survey designed to represent the US population. The researchers pulled five years of data, 2020 through 2024, covering 10,953 adults aged 18 to 25, and tracked four anxiety measures: whether someone had ever been diagnosed, whether they were taking medication for it, how severe their anxiety was, and how often they felt it. Comparing 2024 with 2020, three of the four measures moved in the wrong direction: diagnosis history was up 31 percent in odds terms, medication use up 32 percent, and how frequently people reported feeling anxious up 28 percent. The burden was not evenly spread. Women, sexual minority respondents, and White respondents reported higher odds across all four outcomes than their peers, and the researchers found further differences at the intersections of race, sex and sexual orientation. One important limitation: these are separate cross-sectional snapshots, not the same people followed over time, so the study can show that the young adult population looks more anxious than it did in 2020, but not why, and rising diagnosis and medication numbers can partly reflect better recognition and access rather than more illness.