It is undeniable that students, teachers, and families are currently feeling the effects of the burgeoning mental health crisis going on throughout the country. However, high schools seem to be playing a complicated and often contradictory role in tackling this issue. On one hand, many schools, including RM, feature good-natured attempts to improve student mental health, such as having “Mental Health Awareness Weeks,” bringing therapy dogs to the campus, and posting motivational posters and messages around the school. However, on the other hand, high schools often seem to be the cause of poor mental health.
According to the WHO, “more students report feeling pressured by schoolwork than in 2018, particularly affecting older adolescents,” and PubMed similarly discovered a, “high prevalence of emotional problems among adolescents with excessive academic burden.” While it is considerate that high schools are attempting to address mental health, simply talking about mental health is not enough to improve it. Thus, to actually improve adolescent emotional well being, RM, and other high schools around the country, need to fundamentally change the way they address mental health problems in students.
RM should start by listening to real students and implementing what they think would best improve mental health. For example, many feel that, while RM provides many mental health resources, they are not always accessible or easy to find.“I think that they’re not widely available to everybody. I feel like you have to have certain circumstances to qualify to have certain resources,” junior Adanna Oji said. Others seem to agree: “I just haven’t heard much about it. Like, I know there’s a couple announcements on Canvas every now and then, but I don’t think they’re very helpful,” junior Rithika Arun Venkatech said.
This should be a clear message to RM that they are not reaching their goal of making mental health resources clear and accessible to find. Students often have to sift through Canvas messages to find a related service, or end up missing the resource. In fact, MCPS features an entire ‘Bridge to Wellness’ program that many students will never interact with. RM should work to make their mental health efforts more prevalent in the minds of students, as well as ensure that every student feels like they have an equal opportunity to get help.
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Furthermore, RM should work to improve the mental health services that they already have. Rocket Refresh, a dedicated day where students are supposed to be able to catch up on work and relax, is often pushed aside or ignored entirely by teachers. Many students are not satisfied with this rule-breaking: “I definitely think we should enforce Rocket Refreshes more, because a lot of teachers don’t even follow the schedule,” said Arun Venkatech. As mentioned previously, academic stress is one of the main causes of worsening mental health in students.
Not properly enforcing a day that is supposed to alleviate academic stress is misguided and negligent. RM has previously abandoned policies that aimed to reduce academic pressure for students. “Freshman year there was like a whole thing with, like, test planning, but teachers now don’t stick to that. I think that could help improve mental health,” Oji said. In the past, RM attempted to prevent tests from piling up by only allowing certain subjects to hold exams on certain days of the week. Since slashing that policy, many students now find themselves with upwards of three to four tests on one day. RM should work to support students through academic anxiety by rebuilding this policy, in tandem with properly enforcing the importance of Rocket Refresh.
While schools have made valiant attempts to address mental health, what students need is action that will tangibly make a difference in their lives. RM, and other high schools, need to work on listening to student complaints, making their services more widespread and accessible, and reinstating the mental health resources they have abandoned.
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