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The silent crisis in girls’ mental health

Nature Human Behaviour volume 9, pages 2409–2410 (2025)Cite this article

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Over the past decades, the gender gap in adolescent mental health has widened globally, and girls increasingly report higher levels of mental health issues than boys. A recent international study using data from over 1.2 million adolescents across 43 countries found that this gap has grown particularly in more gender-equal countries not because boys’ mental health has improved, but because girls’ symptoms have worsened disproportionately1. Another longitudinal cross-cultural study that enrolled adolescents in Tokyo and London found that depressive symptoms among girls increased year by year between ages 12 (2012–2014) and 16 (2018–2020) with no comparable trends among boys — which has resulted in a widening gender gap, although age and calendar-year effects could not be disentangled2.

Traditionally, suicide has been more prevalent among male individuals, both in Japan and internationally. The reversal of this long-standing pattern among children and adolescents in Japan represents a unique concern in youth mental health.

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Fig. 1: Number of suicides among children and adolescents (under the age of 20) in Japan.

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Acknowledgements

The authors were supported by JSPS KAKENHI (JP21H05171, JP21H05174, JP24H00666, JP23H05472, JP25K20564, JP25K00889, and JP21H05173), AMED (JP23wm0625001 and JP25oa0439005), JST (JPMJPF2105 and RISTEX JPMJRS24K1) and the Wellcome Trust (309118/Z/24/Z).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Behavioral Medicine, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan

    Zui C. Narita

  2. Economic and Social Research Council Center for Society and Mental Health, Health Service and Population Research Department, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, UK

    Gemma Knowles

  3. Unit for Mental Health Promotion, Research Center for Social Science & Medicine, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, Tokyo, Japan

    Syudo Yamasaki & Atsushi Nishida

  4. Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Kiyoto Kasai

  5. The International Research Center for Neurointelligence, University of Tokyo Institutes of Advanced Study, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Kiyoto Kasai

Authors
  1. Zui C. Narita
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  2. Gemma Knowles
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  3. Syudo Yamasaki
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  4. Kiyoto Kasai
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  5. Atsushi Nishida
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Correspondence to Zui C. Narita.

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Narita, Z.C., Knowles, G., Yamasaki, S. et al. The silent crisis in girls’ mental health. Nat Hum Behav 9, 2409–2410 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02322-2

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