The mental health of New Hampshire high school students, which worsened amid the COVID-19 pandemic, has since shown steady improvement, according to survey data released Tuesday by the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services.
The share of students who reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless decreased to about 34 percent in 2025, down from a peak of about 44 percent in 2021, according to the biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey. That rate is significantly higher than it had been in decades past. Prior to 2015, it was closer to 25 percent.
Still, the recent improvement offers an encouraging signal, according to New Hampshire Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Weaver.
“New Hampshire teens are telling us directly that they’re feeling more supported, more hopeful, and more connected,” Weaver said in a statement. “This progress shows that when services and supports are accessible, our youth can experience better outcomes.”
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In 2021, nearly one in four students who took the survey in New Hampshire reported having seriously considered attempting suicide within the past 12 months. In 2025, that figure improved to about 16 percent, which was in line with the 2017 data and only a couple of percentage points higher than decades past.
New Hampshire’s announcement comes after surrounding states reported similar improvements in overall student mental health.
But unlike the surveys in neighboring Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts, the questionnaire in New Hampshire didn’t ask students about their gender identity — which is significant because all the surrounding states reported that girls and LGBTQ high school students reported higher rates of persistent sadness and hopelessness than their straight, cisgender male peers.
New Hampshire had included an “Are you transgender?” question in its 2023 survey. But that was omitted from the 2025 questionnaire. (The latest iteration still asked students about their sexual orientation.)
The omission of that question coincided with a move by the Trump administration to quit processing transgender identifiers in federal health monitoring data sets, which would include the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. That said, individual states can customize the questionnaires they distribute.
A spokesperson for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond Tuesday to questions about who decided to remove the transgender question and how the state will assess mental health trends among LGBTQ youth moving forward.
This survey has been the subject of controversy in some states. In 2025, Republican state lawmakers in New Hampshire approved legislation to switch the survey from an “opt-out” to an “opt-in” model, citing objections to sensitive questions about sex, drugs, and suicide. Governor Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, vetoed the measure, and lawmakers failed to override her veto.
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Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.