The report shows that more and more young people between the ages of 16 and 29 are experiencing symptoms of mental illness - every day or several times a week. This may include stress, fatigue, abdominal pain, headaches or sleep problems.

- We can see that the development is continuing in a negative direction and it is very worrying. Development started in 2007 and has only increased since then, says Lena Nyberg, the authority's director general.

In 2018, about half of today's young people, 49 percent, said they had stress-related symptoms. A figure comparable to 2007, when one in three young people, 34 percent, responded that they experienced symptoms of stress.

Larger increase among girls

The study also shows that the increase is greater among girls than guys. 60 per cent of the girls responded that they often have problems with stress, the corresponding figure in 2007 was 42 per cent. For guys, stress has increased from 26 percent in 2007 to 36 percent in 2018.

- Many girls feel a lot of performance anxiety - you have to succeed in school and be good looking. We have not identified the causes of the increased stress in this report - we want to go ahead and do this in other contexts.

Increased pressure to be "successful"

Although causes have not been identified, young people who participated in the study have themselves highlighted factors such as performance requirements, social media and the increased pressure to be successful, says Lena Nyberg.

She thinks it is important to address the problem before it grows larger.

- If we do not deal with this, there is a great risk that many young people will suffer themselves and that we will incur a large social cost. To counteract that we will have major problems in the future, it is extremely important that we put resources into this now.