Millennials Are More Prone To Anxiety, Says A Neuroscientist: Here's Why 

It's no secret we're facing a global mental health crisis, one that was only exacerbated by the pandemic. And while everyone should make mental health a priority, no matter your age, our younger generations have experienced some significant declines: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)1, 1 in 4 young adults (ages 18 to 24) seriously contemplated suicide during the pandemic.

However, as communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist Caroline Leaf, Ph.D., shares on the mindbodygreen podcast, it's millennials—those born from 1981 to 1996—whose brains may actually be more prone to anxiety.

In fact, she conducted a clinical trial and found that millennial participants' brains looked physically older: "Some of the millennials that came in had biological ages that were sometimes 30 to 40 years older than their actual age," she says. "So they were sitting there as a 25- to 35-year-old, but their bodies physically were on a level of a 60-, 65-, or 70-year-old."

According to Leaf, the reason lies in their ability to contextualize the future. What does this mean? Well, the millennial age group is in a unique time of their lives where they're just starting to understand the weight of the future—and they start to realize that the elusive "future" has an end date.

"When you're 18 to 24 and younger, death and those kinds of things in the future seem like it's not very tangible," Leaf says. "But your millennials can see the future as more tangible—so it's kind of there, but they can't see their way through."

In other words: The future seems palpable, but they're not exactly sure how they're going to get there—and that chronic uncertainty can leave tons of open space for anxiety to creep through.

She saw this process firsthand in her research: As soon as millennial participants were diagnosed with clinical anxiety disorder, energy immediately dropped in the front of their brains. "When your energy drops in the front of your brain, you have less blood flow, less oxygen. You can literally get little holes in your brain, and then those brainwaves don't flow like they should," Leaf explains.

If you are experiencing anxiety (millennial or not), Leaf says that you do have the ability to change your brain—a process called neuroplasticity—with mind-management techniques. "Some of our participants who were [suffering from depression] had totally flat, blue brains at the beginning of the study, which means very low [brain waves], like a flat line in the sea," she notes. "And once they had my management, the brain had gone gray within three weeks, which means that the waves were flowing properly. And by six to nine weeks, it was sustainable."