Mental Health Levels Up

2024's progress hints at things to come

- ALICE PARK

PROGRESS IN ADDRESSING MENTAL health is notoriously slow and mostly incremental. Breakthrough treatments tend to be rare, and trained professionals too few to meet the demand for services, which is increasing. But 2024 was a pivotal year—thanks to the culmination of decades of research and post-pandemic attention to mental-health issues.

In March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Rejoyn, the first digital therapeutic to treat major depressive disorder. The app opens the door to a new class of therapies that could dramatically increase access to treatment. Six months later, the FDA approved the first new drug for schizophrenia in 30 years, Cobenfy. It targets a different brain chemical system than previous treatments. And psychedelics notched a first when the FDA reviewed a request to approve MDMA for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. Though this bid ultimately failed—the agency wanted to see more research—the FDA remains open to this group of drugs as a promising new way to treat certain mental-health conditions.

These advances come at a time when the need for mental-health services has never been more urgent. About a fifth of teens in the U.S. report symptoms of anxiety or depression, according to the most recently analyzed federal survey data from 2021–22, but 20% say they can’t afford therapy to address their symptoms. The national lifeline for mental-health crises, 988, fielded around 5.3 million calls, texts or chats this year. And the U.S. surgeon general raised the alarm about two major mental-health issues: first calling for warning labels about the dangers of social media for young people, and then highlighting the extraordinary stress and anxiety parents experience in raising families today.