This generation of students is the unhappiest, most anxious, and least optimistic group of children in history. Every day, fourteen students take their lives in America. Suicide is the third most common cause of death for teenagers; rates have been steadily rising since the 2000’s. About a quarter of teenagers are mentally ill. America’s kids are dying, and what is being done to change this? Schools force students to forgo mental health and focus on grades, and companies believe that a suffering teenager is just another person to leech money from. In the end, all these students are left without help to serve the interests of others.
Many students believe that frequent anxiety attacks, insomnia, and self destructive behaviors are normal due to the damaging lifestyle that school and society promote. Students are exposed to extremely harmful and toxic environments in school. They are overworked and overstressed and their value is measured by their test scores. Schools have an incentive to push for more strenuous work: the higher their standardized test scores are, the higher they 're ranked. The unhealthy focus on grades and standardized test scores leads to deteriorating mental health. Students are taught that the only reason they learn is to do well on tests, that if they don’t do well on them then their efforts are useless. A majority of neurodivergent (mentally ill or disabled) students attribute their struggles with mental health to schools, which cause mental illnesses at high rates, but offer limited (if
…show more content…
Weight loss pills and magazines would lose much of their profits if their market of anxious young girls suddenly decreased. Advertizing firms, gym memberships, even companies like Collegeboard prey on troubled teenagers to make more money. The existence of mentally ill students is a beneficial to them, and not something they’re willing to
Like all form of disparities, mental health disparities is a serious challenge for minorities’ communities across America. Individuals with mental health illness how do not receive adequate health care due to variations can be affected in many ways. When their mental illness progress without any diagnosis they can easily be perceived as a threat to society. In cases where crimes are committed, and they cannot prove they are mentally challenged they can be charge and send to prison without being diagnosed which could affect their condition due to the lack of treatment. Without eradicating or implementing policies to deal with mental health disparities the probability of legally or morally assuming that people with mental health challenges are
Mental health is a state of psychological well-being. According to World Health Organization (WHO) mental health includes "subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, intergenerational dependence, and self-actualization of one's intellectual and emotional potential, among others." (Organization, WHO 2001) However, cultural differences, race, ethnicity, personal background, subjective assessment, and socioeconomic status all affect how mental health is defined. This variation in definitions of mental health between different sects of our society further causes drift in methods of treatment, and may cause the burden of mental health to be greater on some cultures.
I am intrigued by your essay “The C Word in the Hallways.” Mental illness, especially in teens, is an important topic to discuss; even now, 15 years after your essay was published. This country has grieved more than its fair share of mass homicide-suicides that have been blamed on mental illness. My own high school has seen one suicide and two more attempted suicides just this year. I agree with your claim that we write mental illness off as unimportant, and what stood out to me most about your argument is how your word choice and the tone of your essay effectively demonstrates how adults dismiss mental illness in teens as a phase of bad behavior.
It is disheartening when great minds become trapped in these unfortunate learning situations, because we lose what they could have been able to achieve. It is obviously not a child’s fault that they were born into the social class they belong to, but they have no way around it. So when they get stuck in a school that does nothing to provide for an active learning environment, many kids become frustrated with school due to the lack of intellectual stimuli and eventually come to dislike school all together. Some may even develop destructive habits, as they have nothing else to serve as a distraction. Mike Rose is one person who had this experience, as so accurately recalled in his essay, “I Just Wanna Be Average.”
As a society, we have made great strides towards being open and honest about how we are feeling, sometimes too much so. Still, a mental illness stigma remains. This does not even begin to compare to the prevalent stigma of earlier times. Despite the lack of a voice and recognition, teenage girls have always been at the epicenter of mental illness. Teenage girls are constantly under the microscope of parents, teachers, teenage boys, and other teenage girls.
Undiagnosed people are failing to receive proper treatment and this could lead to suicide due to the constant negative thoughts that come with many mental illnesses. According to studies, "the suicide rate for girls ages 15 to 19 doubled from 2007 to 2015" (Holmes). Suicide rates are the highest they have been in 40 years. People seem to look over this simple yet astonishing fact. This is not only the wellbeing of students, their lives could be on the line.
Having students committing suicide because school is so hard and brings no joy to their life is beyond terrible, to say the least. The
This would be okay if they were learning but they didn’t like it, but we are both NOT liking school and NOT learning. And considering that when you google “school makes me want to” and the auto-fill is nothing but “kill myself”, “cut” and “throw up”, meaning that school is also depressing kids! The way kids are being taught, is a way that makes kids remember something for a week, throw it up on the test, losing all the information to make room for the new batch of knowledge. This is not genuine learning, because genuine learning means you keep the info, not just get rid of it after the test. Considering that the percent of depressed people is around 6.85% and the percent of depressed college kids is 36.4%, really proves my point.
One in ten children and adolescents will experience a period of major depression (“Mental Health Myths and Facts”). Many avoid the topic of mental health like the plague. In truth, people should be able to talk about mental illness and its repercussions on society and the individual. A minority of those affected with mental illnesses get help. Therefore, it is important to discuss possible solutions to helping those who suffer get treatment.
(Co) In fact, it is also correct that grades have negative effects on students’ mental condition. Illnesses such as depression, cancer, etc, have a cause on the outcome of students’ grades due to absences. (Horton) If sickness is the cause of low grades, grades are inaccurate to measure their ability to learn. Grades can dramatically drop because 26% of Americans, 14 years old and older, experience mental disabilities such as anxiety and major depression (Ramirez).
Over the years the issue of suicide has been slowly increasing. It is now the third leading cause of death among young people. The effects of suicide are tragic and felt long after the individual has taken their own life. Some people who consider suicide, however, never make a “serious” attempt at it. For every attempted suicide, there is said to be more than one person whose thought of suicide has never translated into an actual attempt.
Why do the people of today still associate stigma, shame and blame with mental health issues? Mental health issues are extremely and widely misunderstood. Despite the fact one in four people are likely to experience some kind of mental health problem a year in the United Kingdom. “Mental health is a person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being and it affects how we feel, think and act. It also helps to determine how we handle situations such as stress, how we relate to others and how we make decisions.
School should be used to build a foundation not only in problem solving and analyzing data, but in developing competence, integrity, and understanding how to better direct a student’s emotions and goals. In order to accomplish these goals, one must work hard and above all, one must want to work hard. Mrs. Krick describes it best saying: “... hard work more importantly improves upon the self” (Krick). There are a number of bad influences on these positive outlook, such as Common Core curriculum’s
On the contrary, the assumption that “the majority” should not be taught about mental illnesses is false. The assumption that children and teenagers cannot handle learning about mental illnesses is also false. Since over 20 percent of teens have a severe mental condition, “there are people all around us that are coping with some sort of mental illness” (Fader n.p.). In a group of five friends, chances are at least one of them has a mental illness. Since mental illnesses affect behavior, even the friends of someone who has a mental disorder can be affected.
Suicide is a dominant cause of death among teenagers and young adults. The rate of suicides and suicide attempts increases from time to time. For some, suicide is the permanent solution to a temporary problem and most pressing public health issues across the world. Suicides case is so often these days even becoming a trend and we are not even flinch anymore. The depression and substances abuse for teenagers currently become issues that lead to suicide cases among teenagers.