A survey has found that though stress levels are generally taking a downward turn, young adults’ mental health is now a bigger cause for concern than ever, as their stress levels are higher than the national average.
According to the online study of 2,020 US adults aged 18 and older, the Millennial generation (people aged 18-33) are more stressed out than ever. 39% of those surveyed reported that their stress has increased in the past year, whilst 52% of the young people polled in the survey, which was conducted last August by Harris Interactive for the American Psychological Association, said that stress has kept them awake at night in the past month. This age group also reported being told by a health care provider that they have either depression or an anxiety disorder more than any other age group.
On a scale of one to 10, where one means ‘little or no stress’ and 10 means ‘a great deal of stress,’ the national average in 2012 was 4.9. For Millenials, however, it was 5.4. Mike Hais, market researcher and co-author of two books on that generation, including 2011’s Millennial Momentum, surmises, ‘Younger people do tend to be more stressed than older people do. It may be they are more willing to admit to it. It may be a phase of life. They just don’t know where they’re going in life.’
He continues, ‘Millennials are growing up at a tough time. They were sheltered in many ways, with a lot of high expectations for what they should achieve. Individual failure is difficult to accept when confronted with a sense you’re an important person and expected to achieve. Even though, in most instances, it’s not their fault – the economy collapsed just as many of them were getting out of college and coming of age – that does lead to a greater sense of stress.’
For Millennials, top stress sources were found to be work (cited by 76%), money (73%) and relationships (59%). The economy came in fifth, at 55%, just behind family responsibilities, cited by 56%. Matthew Faraci of the non-partisan Generation Opportunity, a Washington, D.C.-based Millennial advocacy group, says that it’s no surprise that work, money and the economy rate so highly on the stressor scale, as ‘for young people, the jobs picture has been persistently bleak.’
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