An increase in demand for GP appointments for mental health issues may be down to a greater willingness among young people to seek help, a study has found.

Norwegian researchers said mental health problems have being reported to have risen in many high-income countries, particularly among teens and young adults.

An analysis of medical records from all 10 to 46-year-olds in Norway between 2010 and 2024 found that lower thresholds for seeking medical help and changes in diagnostic practice were likely to explain the trend rather than a true increase in worsening psychological ill health.

The study of more than 3.7 million people found the strongest increase was in consultations for symptoms associated with anxiety and depression, rather than anxiety or depressive disorders themselves.

Reporting in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the analysis of GP data, the researchers said the proportion of 10-to-46-year-olds with any mental health consultation recorded by a GP rose from just under 10% in 2010 to 16% in 2024.

Among girls and women, it rose from nearly 12% to just over 19.5%, and 8% to just over 12.5% among boys and men.

The steepest increases were seen among 21-to-30-year-olds, with relative increases of 69% for women (from 13% to 22%) and 52% for men (from 9% to nearly 14%).

Among the youngest age group of 10-to-15-year-olds), the proportion of those with any mental health consultation rose from 3.5% of girls and just over 5% of boys in 2010 to around 9% for both sexes in 2024, the team found.

When consultations for anxiety and depression – two of the most common reasons for mental health consultations – were looked at in more detail, symptom codes showed notably steeper increases than disorder codes across all age groups.

And the data showed that the proportion of primary care consultations for anxiety or depressive symptoms increased substantially over the study period with a 286% relative rise in those coded as anxiety symptoms and a 147% relative rise in those coded as depressive symptoms.

Yet the proportion of consultations coded as anxiety or depressive disorders rose only slightly or remained stable, the researchers said.

The steepest increase in recorded anxiety symptoms was among 16-to-20-year-old women, they added.

In addition, the steepest increases in depressive symptom consultations were among 21-to-30-year-old women, particularly after 2020.

Yet there was no comparable increase in the proportion of depressive disorder consultations in either sex at any age.

‘The observed increases could reflect changes in underlying distress, but also changes in recognition, willingness to disclose symptoms, help-seeking and clinical recording practices,’ they concluded.

‘While the observed over-proportional increase in symptoms is consistent with changes in norms for help-seeking, it cannot exclude alternative explanations, such as an actual increase in lighter mental health problems among young people, for example, due to increased social media use, the pandemic experience, or other factors,’ they added.

The researchers also pointed out that the growing volume of symptom-level presentations poses ‘an organisational challenge for GPs, who face increasing demand that may be more appropriately managed through psychoeducation or brief digital interventions’ rather than traditional clinical pathways.

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Willingness to seek help may explain rising mental health demand among young people