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Nineteen percent of adolescents experience moderate to severe anxiety and 2 million have a substance use disorder. This analysis covers the latest data on adolescent mental illness, suicide and drug overdose trends, and access to care.
A new KFF tracker highlights key federal policy actions during President Trump’s second term that concern issues related to mental health and substance use. The second Trump administration has emphasized law-and-order strategies and scaled back several mental health and substance use-related services, while also continuing some treatment-focused initiatives. The tracker can be viewed in multiple ways, including chronological order of policy actions and by category (Mental Health; Opioids/Substance Use Disorder; Federal Infrastructure/ Data/Guidance; and Gun…
Opioid overdose deaths fell sharply from 2023 to 2024 (79,358 to 54,045), driven largely by decreases in fentanyl-involved deaths. Even after these declines, deaths remained above 2019, the year before opioid deaths increased sharply during the pandemic.
Alcohol deaths increased gradually before the pandemic, jumped in 2020 and 2021, and have fallen somewhat since then. Even after these declines, deaths remained above 2019, the year before the pandemic.
The updated federal alcohol guidelines simply advise adults to “consume less for better overall health” without specifying limits – a change that could portend a renewed rise in alcohol-related deaths.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, deaths due to drug overdose among adolescents more than doubled, primarily driven by the synthetic opioid, fentanyl. National survey data show that while the percent of adolescents (ages 12-17) with a past year substance use disorder decreased from 2021 to 2024, the share of adolescents with a past year opioid use disorder remained stable over the same period. Additionally, less than one-third of adolescents with a past year opioid use…
As Marketplace Open Enrollment nears, policy changes could leave millions of people facing substantially higher premiums and coverage loss, which could lead more consumers to purchase less expensive and less comprehensive coverage through short-term health plans. KFF analyzes short-term health policies sold by nine large insurers in 36 states, examining premiums, cost sharing, covered benefits, and coverage limitations and comparing them to ACA Marketplace plans.
This data note reviews trends in homelessness and characteristics of people who are homeless using data from HUD’s Point-in-Time (PIT) count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness.
This volume examines how prompting techniques can reduce incorrect medical information from AI chatbots; false claims linking vaccines to sudden infant death syndrome; the promotion of an industrial solvent as an allegedly suppressed cancer cure; misunderstandings about the risks of overdose from fentanyl exposure; and ongoing myths about sunscreen safety.
This brief describes the new executive order, examines the intersection of homelessness and mental illness, reviews the history of the deinstitutionalization movement, and discusses specialized treatment services for people with SMI.
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