The survey is not an outlier. Other data suggest increasing despair among many Americans.The latest data on happiness from the General Social Survey is truly something else. Nothing remotely like it in the past five decades of polling. https://t.co/JZBj8H6KpR pic.twitter.com/CALnfzMV9h
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) January 28, 2022
About one-third of respondents to the American Family Survey said their feelings of sadness or depression increased. Just 9% said they felt less sad or depressed between March 2020 and when the survey was fielded in late June and early July 2021. The survey questioned roughly 3,000 adults.
Nearly 1 in 4 said members of their family hadn’t gotten needed mental health care, while 20% said they didn’t get the physical care they needed.
Additionally, more than a third said they gained weight, compared to 17% who lost weight and 49% whose weight stayed the same, the survey found.
