Mental Health
Written by Taylor Harris
Everyone knows that being a teenager is a time of finding who you truly are but many people don’t understand the stress that goes along with that process. That is pretty much a complete summary of what high school teaches you. Who YOU are. This obviously isn’t literally taught within the curriculum but it is the overall moral you can take away from it to use for the rest of your life. Your reactions to stressful times, your work ethic everyday, and your attitude really impact your future. The thought of shaping your future is so demanding. Especially on young kids. Sometimes it can be so exhilarating that it causes other issues within. It could easily affect your mental health. People often think they aren’t good enough or they will never be anything special in this world. Which is such a sad thing to see when you truly grasp the fact that the demands to be “perfect” are way too high nowadays. These expectations are the main causes of mental health.
Mental health is the biggest struggle for most high schoolers. Not everyone can get through it. Many lives are lost from this as well. Way too many young people are taken away from these psychological struggles. When trying to find out who you are the hardest aspect of doing that is learning how to love yourself. Nobody teaches you that. That isn’t something that can be taught it has to be self made. To be fully confident with yourself is something that even adults struggle with. Teenagers have a lot of pressure on them and when they don’t like their image they tend to second guess who they are. They fall into a deep hole where they feel stuck. Like they don’t belong in this world. So heartbreaking to know that a lot individuals have to go through stuff like this. They keep a mental picture in the back of their head of who they want to be but when they aren’t there yet they feel worthless.
The most common one we see today within teens is depression. Depression is a mental health issue that makes you sad and gives you more self-doubt. The thing about this is that you can not control whether it happens or not. It affects how you feel, how you think, and how you act. Depression can happen at any point in your life but the average time we see this start to occur is in your teenage years. They will lose interest in something they used to love. They feel guilty for not being good enough. They lose their energy. All of these thing can, tragically, lead to thoughts of death and suicide. These thoughts result in it happening in reality. We start to see people take their lives because of this severe medical illness. Most can make it through but they have to be strong and fight harder than they ever have before. It is not easy at all. Some can’t do it and depression takes over them. The person suffering from depression can not control it and others can’t necessarily fix it. But they can for sure help. Some of the meanest people in this world are teenagers. No doubt. Think about how different things would be if everyone was nice to everyone all the time. The main cause of lack of self confidence is because people care too much about what others think of them. There wouldn’t be so many people having to question their worth if there was less judging. Being judgemental puts people in the position to think they aren’t good enough. We need less critical judgement in this world.
Too much stress in school gives you the normal reaction of anxiety. Sometimes anxiety is a good disorder because it helps you stay alert and get things done. When experiencing this you might feel really anxious or nervous because your body is releasing stress hormones. Most kids have this when it comes to turning in homework assignments and taking tests but others have it more severe. When someone is suffering it on a higher level they always are filled with an excessive amount of fear. They will have uncontrollable feelings of worry and it’s hard to know how to react to that. The cause of this disorder is simply any type of stress. Everyone knows that some of your most stressful years of your life will come from school. Teenagers especially. The more homework and tests get put on your plate while you deal with sports and everything else that goes on at home. You feel as if your just drowning in all the stuff you have to do. People have panic attacks and have to live in fear. No kid should have to ever feel this way. The schooling system is doing a lot better at understanding kids have other things going on in their life besides school and they are respecting that but there is still a lot of work to do.
Mental health issues are never going to completely go away in our society. There will always be someone somewhere who has to fight through it. Being a high school student is hard. You learn a lot about who you want to be and who you surround yourself with. The only thing we can do to try and prevent it from happening is to be kind. Not only that but be self aware enough to make sure you associate and stay around those who you know will make you a better person. Do things to ensure your in a happy state of mind mentally. Take care of yourself, meet new people, achieve your goals, and find ways to cope with hard times. This is going to be one of the hardest things a kid will ever have to learn. Everyone will go through their own struggles at some point in their life. Be the person to make a difference. If every high school student paid more attention to their mental health and made sure they did what they could to handle it maturely, then we would see a huge difference in this world. Not only now but also for our future.
