Reported mental-health concerns and signs of loneliness among pupils in Northern Ireland fell between 2022 and 2025, according to survey results published by the Department of Health. The proportion of respondents indicating definite mental-health concerns decreased from 19% to 13%, while the share reporting signs of loneliness dropped from 37% to 28%.
The department said 8,875 pupils in school years 8–12 participated overall in the school-based 2025 survey. It also noted that mental-health questions were included in one version of the questionnaire.
That distinction matters when interpreting the results. The overall participation figure needs to be kept separate from the percentages reported for the mental-health questions: it should not be taken as confirmation that all 8,875 pupils answered those questions.
The survey figures must also be read with weighting and sampling caveats in mind. They should not be assumed to be simple, unweighted percentages of all 8,875 participants. The overall sample total cannot be used to calculate counts for the mental-health measures.
Changes in reported concerns
The fall in definite mental-health concerns amounts to six percentage points. In proportional terms, the reported figures correspond to 19 in every 100 respondents in 2022 and 13 in every 100 in 2025. They are percentages, rather than counts of individual pupils.
The reduction in reported loneliness signs was nine percentage points, from 37% to 28%. This was a larger percentage-point movement than the change in definite mental-health concerns, although the two measures started at different levels and describe different reported experiences.
Signs of loneliness remained more commonly reported than definite mental-health concerns in both sets of results. The gap between the two percentages was 18 percentage points in 2022 and 15 percentage points in 2025. That comparison concerns frequency of reporting, not the severity of either experience.
The percentages should not be added together to produce a combined measure of pupils experiencing difficulties. The figures do not establish how far the groups overlapped, or whether respondents reporting loneliness also indicated definite mental-health concerns.
Both measures therefore show a lower reported proportion in 2025 than in 2022, but neither fell to zero. The findings retain two distinct elements: fewer respondents indicated the concerns measured, while some respondents continued to report them in the latest survey.
Scope of the findings
The wording of the mental-health measure is important. The department’s release refers to respondents indicating “definite mental-health concerns”. That should not be recast as a count of diagnosed mental-health conditions. Similarly, the loneliness result concerns reported signs, rather than a separate clinical finding.
The school-based setting also defines the scope of the figures presented. Participation covered pupils in school years 8–12. The results should not be presented as a measure of mental health among all children, adults or the wider population of Northern Ireland.
The comparison is between the reported proportions in two survey years. It does not, by itself, show that the same individual pupils experienced an improvement between 2022 and 2025, or that every participating school recorded a fall in concerns.
Nor do the two sets of percentages establish the path of any change during the intervening period. They support a comparison between the reported 2022 and 2025 results, rather than a claim that concerns declined steadily each year.
The figures alone do not identify a cause for the reductions. They should not be read as evidence that a particular policy, service or other intervention produced the changes, or as a prediction of what a future survey will find.
The central finding is a decline in both reported measures since 2022. The questionnaire qualification remains essential to that account: 8,875 is the overall participation total, while the mental-health findings come from questions included in one questionnaire version.
