School and mental health

Okay, so I'm doing a campaign at school right now about mental health and how our school system can make dealing with mental illnesses harder. If you would like to share your story about how school made you feel worse or anything like that, I would greatly appreciate it. If you would like to disagree with me about how school helps with mental illness, that's also great, it would be good to hear from a variety of viewpoints on this subject.

[Hidden]

I don’t think schools are trained to help with mental illness.

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

They have a few professionals on site, like counselors, but it's true they're not fully trained. They should be, though

[Dolphin14]

We need to start teaching life at a young age. By life I mean courses in dealing with stress, anxiety, overload. We need to incorporate coping skills education. Students need to be encouraged to express feelings.

The youth are not prepared to handle stress levels that are put on them. We know studies show high rates of suicide and drug and alcohol issues in high school and college grade levels.

Let's offer seminars in school on stress relief. Get some social workers in there to run workshops.

We need some proactive guidelines to educate on mental health issues.

[Hidden in reply to Dolphin14]

These are really good ideas!

[Madysen019]

School systems need to understand the importance of being flexible and reasonable with certain things such as extensions. When I was in school , it wasn’t that I was incapable of doing the work in general, it was when I had depressive episodes or panic attacks, I LITERALLY couldn’t even think about doing the work assigned. Schools see this as lack of intelligence, when that is not the case at all. Depression and anxiety can be very severe and even crippling at times which can lead to not finishing assignments “on time”. Another thing too is when a student who has these or other mental health factors , teachers act frustrated when students ask for an extension. I remember asking for them from time to time and explaining that it wasn’t that I didn’t want to but because I couldn’t. Teachers would reply with things such as “this wouldn’t be acceptable in college or the real world just so you know”.

School systems need to educate teachers on how to mentor and assist students who may deal with mental illness instead of seeing them as “falling behind” or “not ready”. This applies for all ages and levels of schooling. Because of the ignorance of my school systems, I have never taken above Algebra 1 because they saw my lack of “ability to keep up” as me not being smart enough to understand when really during this time , I was being diagnosed with severe chronic depression.

it’s time they stop turning a blind and recognize mental health as a valid reason for why students may need extra time and assistance.

[Hidden in reply to Madysen019]

Thank you for your story. I hope that you're in a better spot right now.