The most important aspect to one’s health is how mentally healthy they are. If someone has a healthy mind then they are more likely to be physically healthy too. Research shows that “Estimates from the propensity score matched sample and the entropy balancing in the MCS were very similar in most cases and for most outcomes, different from the MCS nationally representative estimates, indicating the relevance of adjusting the estimates when estimating cohort differences. The descriptive statistics indicated that there were more young people with mental health problems, as indicated by greater proportion above depression threshold and reporting self-harming, in 2015 compared to 2005 (but note the self-harm behaviour question was limited to past 12 months in 2015 compared to lifetime in 2005).”(Pantalay) Millennials are more likely to self harm than the generations before which is an extreme level of being unhealthy mentally, which can also be seen as not taking care of their body. Unfortunately for females, “The increase in internalizing mental health problems was consistent by sex, suggesting that increases in psychological distress and self-harming behavior are not increasing at higher rates in females (albeit higher base rates in females). This finding is in contrast to some older studies of adolescent trends that indicated that increases at the end of the 20th century were more consistent and greater in females.”(Pantalay) This research shows that girls are more susceptible to unhealthy behavior than males, which is also consistent with the research that says women are more dramatically affected by being obese when it comes to the workforce. Research explains the possibilities of poor mental health and states “Results for health related behaviors were mixed with less young people having tried alcohol, binge drinking, smoking and having sex by mid adolescence in 2015 but being more likely to have later bedtimes and wake up earlier, to perceive themselves as overweight and to have higher BMIs.” (Pantalay) Studies show how more millennials were likely to be mentally unhealthy because they are less likely to try social activities that the generations before participated in. This could possibly be a result of the internet sensations and games that millennials are able to participate in that the earlier generations weren’t able to. Research also states how “the influence of mental health problems in grandparents could operate indirectly, where the grandparent’s mental health influences parents’ mental health which, in turn, influences the child’s mental health.” (Hancock)
Hancock1, Kirsten J, et al. “A Three Generation Study of the Mental Health Relationships between Grandparents, Parents and Children.” BMC Psychiatry, BioMed Central, 9 Nov. 2013, https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-244X-13-299
Patalay, Praveetha, and Suzanne H Gage. “Trends in Millennial Adolescent Mental Health and Health Related Behaviours over Ten Years: a Population Cohort Comparison Study.” BioRxiv, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Jan. 2018, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/407585v1
Millennial vs Gen X Health 