August 07, 2025
America’s teens are facing a growing mental health crisis. According to a 2023 CDC survey, 4 in 10 high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness—up from 3 in 10 a decade ago. Alarmingly, 1 in 5 teens said they had seriously considered suicide, a figure that has also climbed in recent years.
The numbers are even starker among certain groups. More than half of teen girls (53%) and nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ+ teens (65%) reported struggling with prolonged emotional distress. In response, more young people are turning to medication: as of 2022, about 4.5% of U.S. adolescents and young adults (ages 12 to 25) had been prescribed antidepressants. Use of these medications has increased across all age groups over the past decade, with a sharp rise among teenage girls during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet even as prescriptions climb, many families are left with questions about how antidepressants work—and whether they’re the right choice for their child. To help demystify the topic, three experts from Stanford Medicine gave more insights into antidepressants use.
Their message: Antidepressants can be safe and effective when prescribed and monitored by qualified physicians. But medication is not a cure-all. Ideally, it should be paired with other forms of support, such as talk therapy—though access to good mental health care remains a challenge for many families.