A smile on your lips and suicidal thoughts in your brain. That's what bad mental health looks like. You never know what's happening until it does. A silent battle that consumes our inner self, a battle that often ends up consuming the whole of us. With the introduction of Covid 19, things have only gone downhill. Awareness about mental health has become ever more important. Today, teens all over the world suffer from poor mental health. As a student myself, the feeling of overwhelming washes over me so often that I have forgotten what it feels like to be contented, satisfied, or even relaxed. Clubs, sports, academics, and sometimes volunteering, are only some of the things students spend their time in - their whole time. The chance to sit, reflect or indulge in self-care is diminishing. Academics take up a massive chunk of our time especially as we progress further, making it harder to spend time on other hobbies or de-stressing activities - harder than it already is. A typical student’s day looks like this- school till the afternoon, homework in the evening, and studying at night. Mind you- studying and homework are 2 different things. That's our typical day which averagely ends around 12 am according to the statistics of the Journal of Adolescent Health. I am sure this sounds familiar. Where’s the time to do what we like to do? Where’s the time to explore beyond the books? Where’s the time to sit back and talk to ourselves? The big question - Where’s the time? These thoughts pile up creating a snowball effect. We ignore our feelings, and push them away - “There’s no time to cry about it, just do it”. There are countless times we want to give up, take a break, just lie down, close our eyes, and rest without the fear of missing out on coping with our studies. But we don't. We simply can’t afford to. The sense of guilt hijacks our wishes of taking a break. Resting almost feels like a crime and we get back to studying even when we really really don't want to. This is a sneak peek into my life and the trailer of millions of students worldwide. Our mental health then goes for a toss, the downhill of a rollercoaster. You don’t know it's going down until it really is and suddenly, you feel like running away- far away from this mental torture, far far away. Intrusive thoughts take over, and clammy hands, and dry eyes. We feel this from time to time - but do we do anything about it? No. We still go on and on and on. Even if stress passes away after a concern has left, anxiety doesn’t. It only becomes worse. Thoughts become wild because we feed onto the growing monster inside us. If only there was someone who could tell me - It’s okay if you don’t get your work done. If only I had taken sufficient breaks. If only I had managed to talk to myself instead of others. If only I could see what I was actually going through inside. Many start to take extreme actions and many wait until they do the same eventually. Our lives are precious, more than our grades, more than our college applications, more than our achievements. They are not who we are and we need to stop emphasizing it and encourage schools to stop reducing our identity to a letter on our tests. Already we are thrown into the race of success without even knowing what true success means to us. All we know is that we have to run in this race and in this race, we sacrifice everything, sometimes even ourselves. 

It's time we force a change because it affects us directly. No one knows how it feels except us no matter how hard they try. We are the ones racing. It all starts with our school. Instead of putting the limelight on academics and emphasizing it as our lifeline of us, they need to switch to encouraging us to take our time, discover new careers, do what we like to do, and do some academic-related work. By just giving us academic-related work, the only direction our brain works towards is theory and theory and we lose track of our practical skills. Yes, academics are important but is it really worth all our time? It is equally as important to indulge in something we love, our hobbies to keep us going. A perfect balance is a must and the first step is to encourage teachers and schools to reduce the work given. Set aside protected time for us to journal, figure out unique careers, and do what we like to do. Just by this small step, we have time to talk to ourselves, figure out what we want to do in the future, and reduce the stress in our lives. It's just this very small step that can save millions of lives. Start emphasizing “protected time” at your own high schools or colleges.