A growing body of literature suggests that there are long-term economic benefits to improving the mental health of young people, ranging from increased participation in the labor force to reduced use of public assistance. However, government budget analysts rarely include these benefits in their analyses because they do not have the resources to model every policy domain comprehensively, and the existing literature does not provide parameters that work well with their modeling approaches. In this study, Nathaniel Counts and colleagues examine the relationship between participants' mental health during adolescence and later economic outcomes. The study shows that implementing policies to improve adolescent mental health could yield substantial economic benefits, highlighting the need for greater investment in preventive mental healthcare.

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