Mental Health Visits Are Rising — But That May Be Good News

The Trend: Mental health visits, especially among young people, have risen sharply over the past decade — but that isn’t necessarily bad news. From 2010 to 2024, healthcare visits for symptoms of depression and anxiety increased by 66% among girls and women and 54% among boys and men, according to a new Norwegian study. Researchers say this uptick may reflect that more people are seeking help earlier and more often, rather than a true rise in mental illness. 

What People Are Saying: The researchers included more than 3.7 million people and separated their medical coding into symptom codes and diagnosable disorder codes. Previous research has typically lumped them together. This helped the researchers glean more information about what was driving this increase: Visits for anxiety and depression symptoms rose by a lot, but formal diagnoses for anxiety didn’t increase significantly and stayed basically the same for depression.

What to Know: Rather than signifying a catastrophic decline in mental health, researchers say the findings show younger people have become more proactive about seeking help. They may also signal a shift over time in how physicians are coding mental health consultations, with doctors seemingly making a formal diagnosis less frequently, perhaps in an effort to reduce stigma of patients.