Thailand’s Lost Youth: Mental Health Crisis and the Price of Policy Neglect

In 2025, several suicides in Thailand, including those of two young people, highlighted a growing mental health crisis among Thai youth. The reasons for their deaths varied from heartbreak to mental health struggles. Collectively, these deaths are a sign of and underscore significant problems such as anxiety, loneliness, and despair. As traditional support systems weaken, many Thai youths turn to addictive or illicit substances like alcohol and drugs to cope. This reflects a systemic crisis, where social isolation, substance use, and misplaced policy priorities feed into one another.

National data confirm the crisis’ depth: recent research from the Thai Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth) and Mahidol University reveals that youth (18- to 24-year-olds) had the nation’s highest rate of depression and anxiety, accounting for 13.7 per cent of those with reported mental health struggles, compared to 10.5 per cent of their older peers (aged 25 to 40 years old). Another survey by the Kid for Kids Foundation found that over 52.3 per cent of youth (defined as those 15 to 25 years old) used addictive substances, including alcohol, cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cannabis, and kratom. Worryingly, 39 per cent of those under 20 years old (the legal age) reported using one or more of these substances, despite being under-age for drinking, and for smoking cigarettes and cannabis.

Together, these findings reveal a generation under mounting emotional and social strain, which fuels substance use. The Kid for Kids survey further found that young people who use addictive substances are more likely to experience mental health issues, which often stem from family instability. The survey identified stress from family indebtedness and isolation from separation of family members as primary contributing factors. For context, Thailand’s household debt was 86.8 per cent of GDP at the end of June 2025. This constrains individuals’ resources and affects family stability. Compared to previous generations, today’s Thai youth are more likely to be raised by single parents or live apart from their nuclear families.

As mental health problems may stem from a lack of family and societal support, many young Thais navigate stress, loneliness, and the pressure to succeed academically alone. Surfing the Internet offers their generation constant connection but little genuine support, often heightening their insecurities through comparison and cyberbullying. Substance use becomes a coping mechanism.

However, social dislocation is only one part of the problem. Misplaced policy priorities have deepened the damage.

Thailand’s youth mental health crisis stems from neglect, complacency, and misplaced priorities.

Nothing illustrates the consequences of policy neglect more starkly than Thailand’s cannabis liberalisation. When then public health minister and current Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul removed cannabis from Thailand’s narcotics list in 2022, the move was hailed as beneficial for medical research, health, and small businesses. Instead, it unleashed a regulatory free-for-all. Dispensaries proliferated across the country, blurring medical and recreational use, and effective enforcement on age controls disappeared. In a society already grappling with youth stress and family strain, the accessibility of cannabis offered anxious Thai youth short-term relief that has traded off their longer term well-being.

Alarmingly, a study by the Office of Narcotics Control Board found that post-legalisation, children as young as 12 years old have gained easier access to cannabis. The Kid for Kids survey reported that cannabis and kratom function as “gateway” substances, with young users less aware of the risks progressing to other substances over time. Although rules tightened in 2025 to limit cannabis to medical use and enforce stricter licensing standards, the damage lingers. Thousands of Thai youth already use cannabis regularly and unregulated products continue to circulate. In a stark example, a two-year-old girl was hospitalised after she ate a cannabis-laced gummy.

This reveals a broader governance failure where commercial and political interests have overridden public health safeguards. Cannabis liberalisation is not the sole cause of Thailand’s youth mental health crisis but a symptom of wider neglect. The same policy vacuum explains the government’s chronic under-investment in mental healthcare. Government responses remain piecemeal, leaving troubled youth to navigate anxiety, isolation, and substance exposure primarily on their own, while those seeking help face a system stretched thin.

For instance, ThaiHealth data show that people seeking mental health treatment rose from 3.3 million in 2022 to 4.4 million in 2024. However, Thailand lacks enough psychiatrists and counsellors to meet demand. Thailand registered just 1.28 psychiatrists and 1.57 psychologists for every 100,000 people, well below the global average of 10.15 mental health professionals for every 100,000 people. Public hospital waits can stretch to as long as six months, while private care is unaffordable for most Thais. For depression and anxiety, where early intervention is crucial, such delays can be devastating.

At the micro-level, strain is equally visible in classrooms. A 2024 report found that 29,062 guidance teachers and 246 psychiatrists served 5.6 million public school students. The Public Health Ministry’s “Kru Care Jai” programme trains teachers to identify at-risk students, but educators, already overloaded with administrative tasks, struggle to implement it.

Thailand’s youth mental health crisis stems from neglect, complacency, and misplaced priorities. To safeguard its next generation, its leaders must act on three fronts. First, authorities must strictly enforce the cannabis age restriction, licensing standards, and public health safeguards. Second, the government should improve access to mental services, especially in schools. Third, relevant ministries should prioritise family well-being as part of holistic mental health and development measures such as debt relief, increased parental leave, and community programmes for social cohesion. Finally, the government must address the digital roots of distress by tackling cyberbullying and online harassment with stronger monitoring, digital literacy education, and legal safeguards. Thailand’s young people are not apathetic or broken. They are creative, ambitious, and eager to shape a fairer future. However, many are exhausted, caught between economic precarity and emotional neglect. Unless the state, schools, and families act together, the crisis consuming Thailand’s youth will keep resurfacing in tragic headlines.

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