making mental marks by chloe schultz

The mental health of students all around the world is overlooked and seemingly uncared for. Every school likes to let themselves believe that their students are perfectly healthy in all categories. Every single day students put on their “school face” which every staff member seems to believe. Kids are never taught how to deal with the mental changes they face and have to overcome.

Every teacher believes they know their students. After all: good grades equal good mental state, right? Teachers and staff do not understand the mindset of students as the years pass and curriculums change. I have personally watched my friends breakdown from years of stress and standards that are too high to reach. Their families and friends in and out of school expect things from them that they can never seem to reach. Kids hold themselves to the line of standard set in their life, and no matter how much effort they put in, they feel as though it wasn’t enough if their report card has too low of a number.

Nobody truly seems to understand. If they do, they don’t really care. People break every night from the stress of homework and tests that pile up day by day every week. Kids have so many factors that affect their mental health. Through the school year, the sanity of students is greatly tested and typically lowered. Through this huge change they go through in every aspect, they never really learn what may be happening inside their brains. Mental health is a single slide in a Powerpoint put in a couple assemblies or a required health class throughout the year. Always mentioned, but never discussed. Students know that mental health issues exist in the world and in their minds, but they never know what to do beyond diagnose themselves with every disorder they read about online.

School is one of, if not the biggest, effector of mental health. This is the place that is known to help kids learn about themselves while they grow into people that can succeed in the real world. Finance, English, and languages are taught every single day to hundreds of thousands of participating students. Through all these classes, there is never really an exposure to students of their mental health and the priority it has in our lives. Mental health is just pushed under a desk in school and glanced right over. There are no mandatory classes in place that can openly teach students about how they can increase their happiness and truly put themselves in the right mental state

Nearly every student you could ask would understand the point being made. Nearly 20 percent of adolescents are estimated to have open and out mental health disorders. However, there are many more students experiencing mental issues that they are completely unsure with how to handle. I know how it is because I was that kid. I remember not understanding what

was going on inside my head or how I could deal with it. There were no open resources that could point me in the direction of help. The things I thought I was feeling were briefly mentioned in health class a couple times a year with no deeper look into them. Schools think that they’re doing so much by being aware that severe mental health issues and disorders exist, but they’re not. Sorry to tell you, but your flyers around the school and the two seminars a year discussing how to prevent suicide does nothing for those students who are struggling alone but are scared to speak up. There need to be paths that can be taken so students can learn how to help themselves and their friends without being forced to tell the staff members that they never see or get to know.

These kids go through overwhelming stress and pain every single day, but they don’t have the first idea of how to take future steps to aid their mental state. There need to be lessons, seminars, classes, really anything that will make it known to these children and teenagers how they can help themselves with what they don’t understand. No student wants to watch their best friend, or even themselves, get lost to the pain that they’ve hid for years because it’s been seemingly worthless to the staff they’ve grown up with. Something needs to change, because we’re tired of hiding our pain waiting for a solution that schools will never bring to us.

love

spring 2020