A new report indicates that while mental health issues among young Swedes remain prevalent, the steepest rise in distress appears to have levelled off, offering a tentative sign of stabilisation amid ongoing concerns.
Sweden’s youth mental health remains worryingly poor, according to a new report from the Swedish Agency for Youth and Civil Society, which says the picture is serious even if the steepest rise may have levelled off. Magnus Jägerskog, the agency’s director general, told TV4 that the figures are “very, very high” and said the agency now sees signs that the long upward trend has flattened rather than continued to worsen.
The TV4 report says seven in 10 teenage girls report psychological distress, compared with four in 10 boys. Among 16 to 24-year-olds, more than half say they struggle with unease, worry or anxiety. The agency’s own release adds further detail, saying 74% of 15-year-old girls report at least two weekly health complaints linked to mental strain, such as stress, low mood, sleep problems, headaches or stomach aches. Among boys of the same age, the share is 45%, while it rises to 83% among young people who do not identify as strictly male or female.
The agency says the greatest need for care is still seen among girls, particularly in relation to suicide attempts and other deliberate self-harm. It also says young people’s general living conditions are not uniformly bleak: more are completing upper secondary school and moving on to university or college, while signs of economic and social vulnerability have improved in some areas. Even so, the broader message of the report is that mental ill-health remains embedded in the lives of many young people in Sweden.
Jägerskog said the findings should help give the government a firmer basis for future action, especially on support that helps young people move into work and adult life. The Public Health Agency of Sweden has separately said that girls and younger people report mental and physical health problems more often than older groups, and that self-reported problems among schoolchildren have risen since the mid-1980s, especially among 13- and 15-year-old girls. That wider pattern suggests the latest report is not an isolated warning, but part of a longer-running public health challenge.
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