Have you noticed a decline in student mental health across our campus? Have you seen this in yourself? Students all around the world are struggling with a variety of mental health issues due to a variety of different factors. A big role, when it comes to these issues is school and the immense amount of classwork and homework students receive. Let’s take a deeper look into some of these issues faced by millions of people globally.
On a regular school day, there are six hours of school and seven classes, so that could lead to a lot of work piling up. It is very easy to be forgetful when there is a lot on your plate. Assignments and other tasks can be forgotten in the mix between things like school, extracurriculars, work and many other things. When students forget assignments, they can be scared to go to school and receive a failing grade. Former Seminole High student Emma Gribbin, now turned virtual, had this to say: “I missed a lot of school days due to the anxiety I had about missing work. I was really scared to face my teachers, and I wanted more time to complete the assignments so I didn’t fail.” Absences in your high school years make a bigger impact than if you missed school in your earlier years of your school career. What also creates a bigger impact is your grades and like stated before, missing assignments are really easy to come upon.
This brings us on the subject of academic validation. Academic validation is craved by millions around the world, and it is the feeling of relying on your grades to depict your self worth. When there is a large amount of assignments to be done, it is possible to feel the need to excel on each assignment you do. Some assignments take longer than others to complete, and that could cause a lot of different things such as anxiety and sleep deprivation. In a growing teen body, a certain amount of sleep is required to function in a day. Especially on a school day where you have to be up and alert for up to seven hours. The required amount of hours for a healthy body is 8-10 hours, and with assignments to do that, it might not be achievable. Sleep deprivation causes more than just being tired, it causes your thinking to be delayed, decreased memory skills and reduced attention span. Critical thinking is a crucial component to getting good grades in school, as it allows you to see things from a different point of view and can enhance your assignments to get your preferred grade.
If you are constantly losing hours of sleep due to school work, it can cause you to fall into a severely depressed state. Sleep deprivation increases negative moods, feelings of sadness along with depression and anxiety. Depression is very commonly found in teens, and studies shown and MHA National states: “As many as one in five teens suffer from critical depression.” As much as 16% of teens suffer from school related depression, which is 4 million teens globally.
Going further into the topic of depression, school can enhance these sad feelings by overscheduling their days and large amounts of stress. Stated by SHS sophomore Autumn Lustilla: “Teachers assign so many assignments in one day, it gets hard to keep track of all of them. I constantly am feeling stressed about what I need to do for school when I get home– it doesn’t really give me time to do anything else.” This shows an inside perspective on how school is affecting students everywhere, including kids at Seminole. We as a community need to change this and create a better, more welcoming environment for our students. Make sure in your day to day life you’re not being too hard on yourself and remember if you won’t remember this in five years don’t spend more than five seconds deciding.