KEY TAKEAWAYSLinks between conditions in schools and higher education institutions in France and young people’s mental health are up for debate amid the student protest movement.Studies objectify the psychological difficulties experienced by many young people, from middle school onwards, more frequent among girls than boys.This data can be compared to results documenting their feelings about their schooling: pressure, impact of Parcoursup (the French national admissions platform for first-year higher education programs), overcrowded classrooms…Since mid September 2026, tens of thousands of high schoolers and students have been taking action across France to demand better teaching conditions: more supply teachers, timetables that better suit their needs, well-maintained buildings and an overhaul of Parcoursup, the national higher education admissions program, pointing out social inequalities within the secondary education system and at university.Their demands illustrate widely felt pressure at school and anxiety, attributed to a learning environment that is not conducive to psychological wellbeing. Can studies shed any light on the subject? What is the state of young people’s mental health in France and what are the links with conditions in schools?Surveys on middle and high school students’s psychological difficultiesSince the 2000s Adolescent mental health has been determined by the HBSC (Health behavior in School-Aged Children) and ESPAD (European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs) surveys along with France’s own national EnCLass survey, since 2018. Edition after edition, they have shown a high level of psychological difficulties.Adolescence is, by definition, a period of emotional, physical and social transformation, and the fact that it is synonymous with psychological difficulties for some young people is common knowledge.Nevertheless, the results of the population monitoring carried out in the Enclass survey show an adverse trend accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic – if during lockdowns the entire population was twice as anxious and more depressed than before, adults returned to more usual symptom levels after the pandemic ended, which wasn’t the case for young people.According to the latest EnClass data collected in 2024, 45% of middle school students (enrolled in 6th, 5th and 4th grades) reported experiencing at least one psychological complaint (depression, irritability or nervousness) more than once a week for at least 6 months, 32% reported feeling nervous, 29% irritable and 21% depressed. Source: EnCLASS – Mental Health (don’t forget to activate English dubbing/subtitles), April 2024. These types of psychological difficulties are systematically higher among girls and increase with age. In boys, levels of psychological distress appear to be slightly lower compared to the 2022 EnClass survey.Among high school students, the situation has considerably deteriorated: 19% of high school students are significantly prone to depression, 20% reported having had suicidal thoughts in the previous 12 months, with 15% having attempted suicide at some point in their lives.In adults, depressive episodes and anxiety disorders are more frequent between 18-29Psychological difficulties may persist after the end of schooling in secondary education. France’s Public Health Barometer – Santé publique France revealed that, in 2024, young people aged between 18-29 are the adult group most affected by episodes of severe depression – one in five (21%) were affected during the 12 months preceding the survey, nearly 7% reporting a severe episode of depression.Similarly, generalised anxiety disorder is also more common among young people aged 18 to 29 than among other age groups: 8% are affected.Finally, young people aged between 18-29 also emerge as the age range who report the most suicidal thoughts (8.6% in the 12 months preceding the study) and suicide attempts (6.7% had already attempted suicide in their lifetime). The latter result is surprising, given that suicide attempts are cumulative and rates are expected to increase with age.It could indicate that young people, particularly affected by suicidal acts, remember it better than other groups. There could also be a generational effect, with young people born in the early 2000s more affected by suicidal tendencies than previous generations for multiple reasons – deteriorated mental health, an increase in poverty, the influence of content diffused on social networks – it can only be confirmed in the longer term.Young people’s mental health has deteriorated since Covid-19Data from Santé publique France on young people seeking medical help confirms a deterioration in young people’s mental health since the Covid-19 pandemic: in 2024, girls aged 11-17 and all 18-24-year-olds were groups being admitted to accident and emergency rooms for self-inflicted acts, including suicide attempts, with levels relatively stable since 2021.The rate of hospitalisations for self-inflicted acts was higher in 2024 than in the previous three years, with particularly high levels among girls aged 11-17 and among young people aged 18-24 of both sexes.Young people’s mental health during Covid-19 and socioeconomic inequalitiesMore than five years after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, the level of mental health problems among adolescents and young adults in France is high, a trend also observed in other countries. The context of armed conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, climate change and content circulating on networks certainly contribute to these levels of “unease”.But the worsening of social inequalities could also play a role: in France, the poverty rate rose from 14% of the population in 2016 to 15.4% in 2024, which is the highest level in 30 years, and a high level that tallies with the European Union average. The group most affected by poverty – 30% of people – are single-parent families, in which about 25% of adolescents in France grow up.Pressure, the classroom environment, baccalaureate reform… How are conditions in schools affecting students?Alongside these societal and macroeconomic determinants, what role does the schooling environment play? France’s youth is regularly vocal about stress surrounding Parcoursup, the higher education admissions system that is based on results from the final two years of high school.School pressure, against a backdrop of broader concerns about the academic and professional future, features among the stressors that can increase the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms in young people. Meanwhile, the international study Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBCS) conducted under the auspices of the World Health Organization in Europe (WHO), in Central Asia and Canada, shows that French students are not the ones who complain the most.On the other hand, French students are among those who have experienced an unfavourable evolution in recent years, especially young girls. In 2014, 40% of 15-year-old girls in France reported they had experienced a high level of school-related pressure, while eight years later, 60% of them did.The pressure can come from school curricula to cover and assessment methods. It can also reflect learning conditions and how much students are receiving the support they need from their teachers.French teenagers are also distinguished by lower than average levels of trust in their teachers: 35% of 15-year-old students say their teachers support them, compared to 42% on average. At the same time, 48% of them, compared to an average of 53%, said they felt supported by their peers.The Pisa Surveys (International Program for Monitoring Student Achievement) confirm these results, as has outlined the findings of the CNAM and the French Centre for Educational Systems Studies. In 2022, 18% of 15-year-old French students reported that teachers were not interested in each student’s achievement, compared to 11% on average. Half of French students additionally complained about noise and unrest in the classroom, and France features in the high end of countries where students tended to be less self-confident and more likely to report fear of failure.These trends can be compared to the increase in class sizes in general and technological (vocational) high schools and colleges, from 27 per class in 1990 to more than 30 in 2023. The impact of France’s baccalaureate reform in 2018 must also be taken into consideration, which, by removing certain fields of study, may have individualised educational pathways and split class groups by isolating students and making it more difficult for them to find support from their peers. This is a hypothesis that should be examined in future research in order to prove it right or wrong.School pressure also comes from students’ perception of what comes next after high school. If, in 2024, nearly eight out of ten baccalaureate students continued their higher education studies, only about 35% of students who enrolled in undergraduate studies obtain a degree within three years, while 55% leave university without a degree, in comparison with 45 and 40%, the respective rates in the European Union.Finally, if France invests, on average, around 15,000 US dollars per student (which is currently equivalent to about 13,500 euros) throughout their schooling and corresponds to about 5% of gross domestic product, and is comparable with the averages observed in OECD countries, investment in higher education remained stable between 2015 and 2022, while the number of students increased by 20% during the same period. This translates into a relative decline in the share of public funding for higher education, from 80% in 2015 to 75% in 2022.This relative decline in the resources invested in secondary and higher education could result in the deterioration of learning conditions from a students’ point of view – teachers are not replaced, a decrease in the attractiveness of France’s exam process for becoming a certified teacher in France, resulting in the employment of poorly trained contract teachers, and problems affecting admissions for thousands of baccalaureate holders due to a lack of places in higher education.Young people’s mental health is directly linked to the environments in which they grow up, both physical and virtual, and the school system that they are part of undeniably influences their individual experiences, their stress levels and the sense of injustice and concern that many of them express.The reasons why high school students are taking action today may well be, at least in part, for the same reasons why their mental health has deteriorated in recent years. A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!Maria Melchior is part of the FCPE (parents of pupils' association) and a board member of at the Ecole des Parents et des Educateurs. She received funding from the European Union and France's National Research Agency, and France's Institut national du cancer.Camille Davisse-Paturet received funding from France's Institut pour la Recherche en Santé Publique (IReSP).