Mental health in the high school environment is becoming a more common topic as suicide and depression rates in teenagers rise every day. To be more specific, more than 1 in 5 adolescents will be diagnosed with some variety of mental disorder. Many schools have taken very high precautions to make sure every student knows that their mental health is important and should not be set aside to make room for education. Though it is important, many students tend to ignore their mental health in fear that it could affect their schoolwork.
One way to address this issue would be for schools to make mental health awareness more accessible to their students. More than half of the 50 states have not adopted mental health curricula in grades K-12, and only 10 states have passed laws for a comprehensive curriculum in mental health. This leaves teenagers without the knowledge and resources they need to understand and care for their mental well-being.
A contributing factor to struggling mental health in high schools, along with a lack of recognition, is bullying. Bullying in today’s high schools looks different when we compare it to bullying in the past. Most of the bullying happening in the current day is cyber-based and often occurs outside of school. But even outside of the school building, it is just as important for schools to pay attention to outside of school, but school-related bullying. Many students involved in this type of bullying have fears of getting “jumped” after school or getting rumors spread to ruin their social reputation. This leaves a heavy amount of societal stressors on the shoulders of high school students.
WCHS students’ views on mental healthcare at the high school.
The counseling office is a safe space for students in the high school, and those counselors encourage the students to come and speak with them if they ever have something pressing on their mind. When I interviewed an anonymous sophomore, they supported this claim with a personal account, stating, “The counseling office helped me talk about my feelings and having someone to talk to when I have no one else.”
With the front office having control over write-ups for bullies, anonymous expressed, “A lot of people get bullied and nothing really happens. [The bullies] may get detention or something, but other than that they just keep doing it…” This statement helps us understand how the office deals with bullying at WCHS, and how little effort there is to prevent bullying, besides Friday school or a write-up. “…If the people who are bullying are getting reported, then the school administrators should do something more because they will still bully even with the (current) consequences.”
The final verdict.
WCHS lacks adequate precautions over making sure that each student has a safe space in this building. Moreover, when it comes to bullying, the school seems to only give bullies a warning or, at worst, Friday school. The new age of mental healthcare provided for teenagers has arrived, and a greater awareness has started to be applied in schools nationwide. Though there is still much work to be done in order to improve mental health awareness throughout the nation, America is slowly but surely taking that first step.
All views and opinions represented in this article are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of any employee at Woodford County High School or Woodford County Public Schools.
