Larner alumna Greta Spottswood, M.D.’11, M.P.H., commented for a Vermont Public story about research showing that depression rates in Vermont youth have nearly doubled in recent years. It’s a problem that’s not unique to Vermont—youth mental health disorders are on the rise globally.
Looking at billing data from nearly 100,000 young people in Vermont between 2016 and 2022, researchers found the number of kids under the age of 18 who received depression diagnoses nearly doubled over that time—from about 4 percent to nearly 7 percent.
In Vermont, researchers also found a discrepancy between depression rates of kids covered by commercial insurance and kids covered by Medicaid, a public program that insures people with low incomes and people with disabilities. Kids who get insurance through Medicaid had a more than 50 percent chance of having a depression diagnosis, even though they weren’t screened more—they actually had fewer routine visits to the doctor’s office.
“Medicaid can be a proxy for economic status,” said Larner alumna Greta Spottswood, M.D.’11, M.P.H., a child psychiatrist in Vermont. “We know that when there's less economic opportunity, as we’re seeing in the study, there’s less access to health care, maybe less access to healthy foods, less autonomy over a family’s time.”