U.S. high school students show gains in mental health and diet, CDC survey finds

The CDC’s 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey found fewer U.S. high school students reporting poor mental health and suicide risk, and more eating fruit, vegetables, and drinking water daily than in 2023.

Today’s Progress

On Sept. 21, 2026, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Youth Health in Focus, drawing on the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) of U.S. high school students. The survey is fielded every two years; the 2025 wave was a nationally representative sample.

Between 2023 and 2025, several mental-health and suicide-risk measures improved. The share of students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness fell from 40% to 33%. Poor mental health declined from 29% to 23%. Students who said they seriously considered attempting suicide dropped from 20% to 14%. Those who made a suicide plan fell from 16% to 12%, and attempts from 9% to 6%. The share reporting injuries from an attempt that required medical care moved from 2% to 1%, a change the CDC classified as not statistically significant, according to reporting on the CDC release by the American Hospital Association and Education Week.

Dietary behaviors also moved in a healthier direction. Daily fruit consumption rose from 33% to 39%, daily vegetable consumption from 58% to 63%, and drinking plain water at least three times a day from 54% to 58%, as summarized in secondary coverage of the CDC figures and on the agency’s Youth Health in Focus materials.

Sports-team participation increased from 52% to 58%. Daily physical activity levels, muscle-strengthening activity, and meeting recommended activity guidelines were largely unchanged from 2023 to 2025, and fewer students attended physical education daily. About 24% of students got at least eight hours of sleep on an average school night in 2025, similar to 23% in 2023.

CDC Deputy Director and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jennifer Shuford said the mental-health shifts are “meaningful improvements” that show progress is possible when schools, families, and communities support young people.

Why This Matters

After pandemic-era peaks—persistent sadness reached 42% and serious suicide consideration 22% in 2021—the latest two-year declines extend an encouraging direction first visible in 2023 data. Lower rates of hopelessness, poor mental health, and suicidal thinking may mean less immediate suffering for large numbers of adolescents and could ease pressure on families, schools, and emergency care—though the survey measures self-reported prevalence, not those downstream effects.

Higher daily fruit, vegetable, and water intake is a concrete behavior change linked to long-term metabolic and cardiovascular health. Sports-team participation can support physical fitness and peer connection, even when overall daily activity minutes have not yet risen.

These are measured self-reports of current student experience, not forecasts. They do not by themselves prove which programs caused the shift, but they document that large-scale worsening is not inevitable.

Evidence and Context

Evidence stage is demonstrated for the survey-reported changes: the YRBS is a long-running, nationally representative self-report system, and multiple independent outlets and CDC materials align on the headline percentages.

Limits remain important. One in three students still reported persistent sadness in 2025. Female students continued to report higher rates than male students across mental-health and suicide-risk indicators; Education Week and other coverage note that girls and LGBTQ+ students remain more likely to experience these burdens. Over the 2015–2025 decade, persistent sadness was still worse than in 2015 (about 30%), even after the recent drop, and some suicide-related 10-year trends are classified as unchanged. Sleep and many activity measures did not improve in the latest two-year window.

Journalists also noted that this report’s public emphasis centered on nutrition, activity, sleep, digital behavior, and mental health, with less front-and-center treatment of substance use, sexual behavior, violence, and some disparity breakdowns than in prior YRBS packages—though CDC officials said fuller data remain available on the YRBS site for states and communities. Self-report surveys can under- or over-state behaviors; they exclude youth not enrolled in high school.

What Made This Possible

YRBS has tracked adolescent risk behaviors for more than 35 years, giving schools and public-health agencies a recurring national benchmark. Clinicians quoted in coverage, including pediatrician Dr. Scott Hadland of Mass General Brigham for Children, point to a multi-year recovery path since 2021 rather than a single policy. CDC messaging credits combined support from schools, families, and communities; the survey itself does not isolate one causal program.

Progress Toward Global Goals

SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being): Reductions in self-reported poor mental health and suicide risk, plus higher daily fruit, vegetable, and water intake among a national high-school sample, align with targets on mental health and healthier diets. No SDG is clearly undermined by these measured gains; unfinished work on sleep, activity, and equity gaps means the goal is only partly advanced.

Building on This Success

The following possibilities were generated with the assistance of AI to explore how this progress might be improved, expanded, or adapted. They are ideas for further investigation, not established findings or recommendations from the people featured in the original reporting.

Sustaining two-year mental-health and diet gains will likely depend on whether schools and communities keep protective supports in place where burden remains highest—especially among girls, younger high-school grades, and groups the public report treated lightly. Pairing nutrition environments with sleep and daily-activity strategies could address the flat lines in those domains. Transparent release of subgroup YRBS tables would let local systems test whether national averages mask stalled or reversing groups.

Which supports most likely helped U.S. high school mental-health and diet indicators improve from 2023 to 2025?

Using a prevention-systems lens, school-based behavioral health access, family connection, and peer belonging are plausible contributors to lower sadness and suicide-risk reports; a measurable test would be whether districts that expanded counseling, 988 linkage, or multi-tiered supports show larger YRBS declines than peers with flat staffing, holding demographics constant.

Using a nutrition-environment lens, cafeteria standards, water access, and sports participation may help explain higher fruit, vegetable, water, and team-sport rates; districts could track plate-waste and water-fountain or bottle-filler use alongside the next YRBS wave to see if environmental changes track survey gains.

Obstacles include uneven local resources, remaining disparities by sex and identity, and the risk that report framing shifts reduce attention to substance use or violence. None of these mechanisms is proven by the national averages alone.

Three Promising Next Steps

1. Equity-focused local YRBS analysis — State education and health agencies publish sex, grade, race/ethnicity, and LGBTQ+ breakouts from 2025 data and set two-year reduction targets where gaps are largest; success metric: statistically significant gap narrowing by the next wave.
2. Sleep and PE recovery pilots — Districts that kept mental-health gains but flat sleep or falling daily PE test schedule, start-time, or required PE changes; success metric: share sleeping ≥8 hours and daily PE attendance rising without loss of mental-health gains.
3. Sports-plus-nutrition linkage — Schools expanding team sports add fruit/vegetable access at practices and games; success metric: joint rise in team participation and daily produce intake in school-level surveys.

What Readers Can Watch

• Release of full 2025 YRBS data tables and state/local results on the CDC YRBS site.
• Whether the next biennial survey (expected around 2027) sustains or reverses the 2023–2025 mental-health and diet improvements.
• Local district reports on counseling capacity, PE minutes, and school meal or water-access changes tied to student outcomes.

What Readers Can Do

• Review CDC’s Youth Health in Focus and full YRBS materials for primary figures.
• Families and students in crisis can use the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call, text, or chat 988 in the U.S.).
• Ask local school boards for published YRBS or equivalent youth survey results and for how mental-health staffing and nutrition standards are tracked.