The UN World Youth Report on Youth Mental Health
- Maddie Barrett
- Mar 24
- 2 min read
The World Youth Report, a publication created by the UN, looks at youth mental health and well-being of nearly 3,000 young people from 137 countries. This report examines six dimensions across a young person's life: education, employment, family and relationships, poverty and deprivation, technology and online environment, and society. For each dimension, they explore the factors that influence wellbeing.
“Being young means having options; It means having a whole life ahead of you. But today, being young also means not being sure whether the world will allow you to have a future in it.
Jorina Kaminski, during the launch of the report.
To collect the data, the researchers used an online questionnaire filled out by almost 3,000 respondents. They also ran eight focus groups, and conducted nine one-on-one interviews with individuals across the globe.
Reflections from Kathryn Ross, Skylight CEO
Every week, I meet rangatahi and whānau who are doing everything right and still struggling. That’s what keeps bringing me back to a simple, confronting truth: the socioeconomic determinants of health shape youth mental health so profoundly that frontline services can feel like an ambulance permanently parked at the bottom of a very high cliff.
We’ll always turn up with care and skill - that’s our mission. But if we want different outcomes, we also need to build fences at the top: decent incomes, stable housing, inclusive schools, supported parents, safe communities, and services that are easy to access without stigma.
The World Youth Report on Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing examines how youth mental health and well-being are shaped by six social determinants – education, employment, family dynamics, poverty, technology, and societal attitudes. It highlights how inequalities in these areas create disparities in mental health outcomes and that stigma, discrimination, and unequal access to opportunities and care compound risks for young people.
The evidence is stark. Socioeconomically disadvantaged tamariki and rangatahi are two to three times more likely than their more advantaged peers to develop mental health problems. Persistently low socioeconomic status is strongly related to the onset of mental health difficulties, with low household income and low parental education among the strongest predictors. Pathways include economic stress, chaos in the home, and community violence, often mediated by parental depression, conflict, and parenting practices shaped by relentless pressure.
This isn’t about a lack of love or effort. It’s about what poverty does to families over time.
