Newly released data from the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER) Social-Emotional Wellbeing survey of around 500,000 primary and secondary students between 2018 and 2023 reveals a generation deep in emotional crisis and lacking the tools to manage their emotions. Girls at all ages are struggling to cope more than boys. “Many indicators of wellbeing examined in the survey have worsened and barely any have improved despite all the genuine attention and effort by schools and parents and the millions of dollars spent to fund youth wellbeing programs, ‘’ the survey’s author Michael Bernard, California State University Emeritus Professor, and former Melbourne University Professor, said.
The ACER data is collated from the well-being surveys completed by students undertaken by schools seeking to get a handle on the extent of the challenge. It captures kids from all states and territories and from both government and non-government schools.

Australia’s primary school-age children are angrier, lonelier, more anxious, and less able to control their emotions than they were 5 years ago, new research finds, despite the increased societal concern for childhood wellbeing and focus on resilience. The picture is no less bleak in secondary school, where more than one in two students say they feel “very stressed”, an upward trend since 2003, and 56% say they have a hard time controlling their sense of worry.
Professor Bernard said the new numbers were staggering, even before looking at recent trends. “The numbers are bad for young primary schoolkids and get worse as they get older.” The survey reports one in three (32 percent) of the more than 300,000 primary school-age students say they “feel bad for long periods”, and almost half (44 percent) say they can’t calm down quickly when they feel bad. In secondary school, 53 percent of the 180,000 surveyed say they feel “very stressed”. By year 12 it is 77 percent of girls and 55 percent of boys. Adolescent mental health expert and psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said his practice had been deluged with “so many extremely anxious, extremely depressed kids.” “In my 30 years in the field I’ve never seen anything like the level of stress and anxiety that today’s children and adolescents are going through,” Dr Carr-Gregg said.
What these psychologists fail to mention is the key factor that is impacting the mental health of teens. It is the teaching of evolution as a fact in schools, even Christian schools. The Big Bang and Evolution remove God from His creation and make the Bible a book of fables and myths. It also removes any purpose or meaning to life. There is no hope or knowledge of the God who loves His creation and has provided a way back into a right relationship with Him and the promise of eternal life.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
