Divergent decennial trends in mental health according to age reveal poorer mental health for young people: repeated cross-sectional population-based surveys from the HUNT Study, Norway.

Objectives: Public health trends are formed by political, economic, historical and cultural factors in society. The aim of this paper was to describe overall changes in mental health among adolescents and adults in a Norwegian population over the three last decades and discuss some potential explanations for these changes.

Design: Repeated population-based health surveys to monitor decennial changes.