Mental Health Editorial
The faint sound of teens talking in the hallway and shuffling to class is drowned out by the overwhelming thoughts of all the assignments you have yet to complete. Before each class you quickly try to fill out your assignment before the deadline- even if it is wrong. Your last night's laziness soon turns to today's frantic mindset. You soon are kicking yourself for taking a break from your stressful day that consumed you. Walking into your front door, a chaotic chore list fills your brain and you become extremely helpless and overwhelmed. 

Coming home from a 7 hour non-stop school day can be extremely stressful and draining on kids, so having hours of homework and studying can double the amount of overwhelming feelings on kids. The mental health epidemic in teens is a very serious and  detrimental issue and the American educational system has failed kids by ignoring this. School is where adolescents spend most of their youth until they become young adults. Adapting the harmful habits and tools regarding mental health and wellbeing soon becomes a second nature to implement in their everyday life. If schools don’t take the mental health crisis of children seriously, then who will?

The on-going debate going around is, should schools be held accountable for their lack of awareness and what can they do? Many students believe that school is the main reason why kids don’t know how to care for their well-being. according to many teens during a NYT article poll on how school affects their mental health, it has been expressed that their days feel the same and constantly overwhelming. Feeling like your life is becoming repetitious can make you start to become depressed and experience anxiety from being in this cycle. It needs to be the responsibility of our children's schools to teach young adults how to cope with what they're feeling and not suppress it. There are many reforms that the education system can go through, one of which is knocking down the stigma behind mental health issues by creating a safe space. According to an article from the New York Times shows how beneficial providing mental health days for students can be. The parents of Chloe Wilson; a girl who committed suicicde in 2018 due to severe bullying, stated that if she was provided mental health days then a more open environment would be available to talk about her wellbeing. It becomes an awkward, touchy subject for kids and learning how to express what they're going through can help a lot. Giving mental health days to children and having designated rooms that are meant to help kids cool down. 

Proulx, Natalie. “nytimes.com/2019/09/12/Learning/Students-Mental-Health-Days.html.” Should Students Get Mental Health Days Off From School?, 2019. 

Hospitals, University. “A Growing Mental Health Crisis Among America's Children and Teens.” 7 Jan. 2020, www.uhhospitals.org/Healthy-at-UH/articles/2020/01/a-growing-mental-health-crisis-among-ame.