Teen depression fell by a quarter in the federal survey between 2021 and 2025
SAMHSA's survey of 12 to 17 year olds found 20.8% with a major depressive episode in 2021 and 15.1% in 2025. Severe impairment fell from 15.2% to 11.0%. Just over half of those with an episode received any treatment.
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Caveat on this rating: NSDUH surveys the civilian, noninstitutionalized population aged 12 or older, so people in hospitals, prisons, nursing homes, on active duty or unsheltered are not in it; SAMHSA states that estimates from 2021 onward are not comparable with 2020 or earlier, so no line here runs back further than 2021. A survey answer is not a diagnosis. The report gives no cause for the decline and none is claimed here.
Significant findings
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health is the federal government's yearly count of who says they are unwell. In 2025 it completed 10,933 interviews with adolescents aged 12 to 17. On depression, its report says: "Among adolescents aged 12 to 17, the percentage who had a past year MDE decreased from 20.8 percent (or 5.2 million people) in 2021 to 15.1 percent (or 3.7 million people) in 2025 (Figure 54 and Table A.36B). Similarly, the percentage of adolescents who had a past year MDE with severe impairment decreased from 15.2 percent (or 3.8 million people) in 2021 to 11.0 percent (or 2.7 million people) in 2025."
The year by year figures in the report's table are 20.8, 19.5, 18.1, 15.4 and 15.1 percent. A "major depressive episode" here means the adolescent's answers to a fixed set of interview questions matched the diagnostic criteria for an episode in the past year. It is not a clinician's diagnosis and it is not a screening score.
On treatment: "Of these adolescents with a past year MDE, 57.7 percent (or 2.1 million people) received mental health treatment in the past year (Figure 83 and Table A.62B), including 48.4 percent (or 1.8 million people) who received mental health treatment in an outpatient setting." The report publishes treatment for 2025 only, because the questions changed in 2024 and, in its words, "4 years of comparable data are not available."
Worth asking
Nobody knows why the line fell, and the report does not say. What it does say is what the number is: one adolescent in seven answered the questions that way in 2025, down from one in five. The survey cannot see anyone in a hospital, a residential programme or a detention centre. If your household is one of the 1.6 million with an adolescent who had an episode and no treatment, that is the number, and the questionnaire page linked in the explorer explains what the score on a form does and does not mean.
Source
Key Substance Use and Mental Health Indicators in the United States: Results from the 2025 National Survey on Drug Use and Health — Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (2026)
Read the source: https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2025-nsduh-annual-national-report
How this was scored
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- Sample size
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- Preregistered
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- Conflicts disclosed
- not recorded
- Independent of proponent
- not recorded
- Retracted
- No
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Published September 17, 2026.
Questions
How strong is the evidence behind this?
veisund rates this source "not yet assessed". We have not finished checking this source. No judgement either way. One caveat travels with that badge: NSDUH surveys the civilian, noninstitutionalized population aged 12 or older, so people in hospitals, prisons, nursing homes, on active duty or unsheltered are not in it; SAMHSA states that estimates from 2021 onward are not comparable with 2020 or earlier, so no line here runs back further than 2021. A survey answer is not a diagnosis. The report gives no cause for the decline and none is claimed here. The score is calculated from recorded facts about the source — study design, funding, publication venue, sample size, preregistration — not typed in by an editor.
What is the source for this?
Key Substance Use and Mental Health Indicators in the United States: Results from the 2025 National Survey on Drug Use and Health — Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (2026). The full source is linked on this page so you can read it yourself.
Is this medical advice?
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.