Dimly lit laptop screens in the middle of the night crammed with open assignment tabs have become a common occurrence for many MVHS students. For sophomore Mika Yuan, one week in particular had become unmanageable, filled with a packed workload, a piano exam and personal grief. It was only when she felt herself unfocused and her performance declining that she made the decision to take a day off.
According to California’s 2021 Senate Bill 14, public school students can take up to five excused absences for mental health reasons, without question. It puts mental and physical well-being on the same level, including under excused illnesses, “an absence for the benefit of the pupil’s mental or behavioral health.”
While many students like Yuan only learn about the policy through their own research, attendance technician Hadiya Key has noticed that mental health has become an increasingly common reason for absences. She explains that due to privacy concerns, she typically marks these absences under illness.
“We just let it be and clear them,” Key said. “But, I let the admins and their counselors know. That way, they’re aware that their student is having a mental health day so they can check in on them.”
Yuan believes the value the policy offers for student mental health is significant and something few students at MVHS are aware of.
“People sometimes don’t realize that mental health is as important as physical health,” Yuan said. “If you don’t take care of your mental health, it can really affect how you learn and how you focus. So, it’s important to understand when you need a break from school or stress, and to just give your body a time to recover.”
For students like Yuan, emotional capacity, how much stress and emotion a person’s nervous system can handle at any given moment, can only go so far. School-based therapist Akiko Chung finds that the academic pressure at MVHS is often a legitimate source of burnout.
“If their emotional capacity is full, it is very hard to concentrate and focus,” Chung said. “So a mental health day is really to create mental emotional capacity in their brain so they can focus in class, they can start learning, that’s the whole purpose.”
“If their emotional capacity is full, it is very hard to concentrate and focus,” Chung said. “So a mental health day is really to create mental emotional capacity in their brain so they can focus in class, they can start learning, that’s the whole purpose.”
— Akiko Chung
For Yuan, recognizing that her own capacity had been reached wasn’t immediate. When her grandfather passed away during an already demanding week, she began noticing the toll it was taking on her in the classroom before she made any decision. She finds that kind of self-awareness, like observing a real difference in a student’s performance, is what separates a meaningful mental health day from simply skipping school.
“You should have a reason,” Yuan said. “It shouldn’t just be like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to go to school today,’ If you’re more self-aware about how it’s affecting you, that’s when you should be able to step back and take a break.”
Chung adds that the effectiveness of a mental health day comes down to a student choosing it by themselves. Without that willingness, she explains that the day can backfire, as instead of resting, a student may spend it anxious about missing their classes, which defeats the purpose of the break entirely. It’s a dynamic she carefully navigates in her own work with students.
“As a therapist, I would suggest ‘you know what, it seems like you do need to take a break,’” Chung said. “But there is a difference between being suggested to take a day versus when a student just wakes up and tells their parents, ‘I’m mentally exhausted, can I take a day off?’ and choose it for themselves.”
That fear of falling behind is also one of the main reasons students hesitate to take time off at all. During her own rest day, Yuan found it hard to fully disengage, often catching herself worrying about accumulating work and missed instruction. Chung sees this regularly among students weighing the decision.
“I think they do have a desire to take a rest break, but they are also afraid to fall behind,” Chung said. “I think some kids do not want to miss instructional time in class, because they want to keep up with their assignments and lectures, in order to maintain good grades.”
But for staff, the policy brings a different type of concern. While Key supports the policy, she recognizes the difficult position it puts staff in, because mental health is personal and hard to verify, and it can be easy for students to misuse the absence policy.
Despite this, both Key and Chung say that MVHS takes a more personal, lenient approach to mental health days than many schools might. Rather than issuing formal absence notices, staff first check in with students to make sure they’re okay. They find that despite MVHS’ rigor, the support system and option for mental health days show that the school prioritizes student wellbeing, not just academics.
When Yuan was transparent about her absence, she found that support firsthand. Teachers encouraged her, her peers were understanding and her family was on board. And, when she returned, she noticed the difference she felt.
“My tank was full again,” Yuan said. “You’re just going to eventually get burnt out if you know that you’re stressed out and just keep going anyway, so I think taking that break just helped me feel more ready to work again.”
“My tank was full again,” Yuan said. “You’re just going to eventually get burnt out if you know that you’re stressed out and just keep going anyway, so I think taking that break just helped me feel more ready to work again.”
— Mika Yuan