The mental health of children and young people has become a national emergency. While youth mental health has been getting worse since 2019, it has truly become a crisis since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted the Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey between January and June 2021 and found a number of concerning issues around the mental health of American adolescents. One of the more disturbing statistics was the increasing trend of high school students who had considered attempting suicide; from under 14% in 2009 to just under 19% in 2019 to 19.9% in 2021. Almost half of those individuals actually attempted suicide in 2021 – 9% of high school students.

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