Credit: Alyssa Ao

WSPN’s Vanessa Taxiarchis discusses her thoughts on how mental health is negatively affected by school.

School helps us in many ways. It teaches us social skills, gives us an education and brings some of us friends for life. But oftentimes for high school students, school also brings poor mental health. Although we supposedly learn everything we need to know during the school day, a lot of teachers don’t hesitate to hand out homework for what seems like no reason. Us teenagers are already juggling a million things to do, and being slammed with homework every night does not help. Over-scheduling between all of these duties can lead to burnout, sleep deprivation and not being able to spend time with family.

A lot of people experience mental health struggles while in high school. The daily routine of getting up early, going to school for seven hours, playing a sport or participating in an extracurricular activity, returning home and eating dinner, washing up and then starting homework is just not a reasonable cycle. I hope teachers begin to realize the toll and pressure students feel to succeed inside and outside of school. The amount of emails teachers receive from their students per week requesting extensions is an indication of this issue, but it doesn’t look like a change is occurring any time soon.

Although school systems tend to provide counselors for the students, the unfortunate reality is that not a lot of students are utilizing this resource. The academic pressure students are under starts out with just stress, but slowly turns into more. The desire teens have to excel and do well academically eventually leads to performance anxiety, and students start to fear failure. This opens up to decreased self-esteem, mental health disorders like depression and anxiety and increased stress levels.

“I spend about five hours a day finishing up my homework after I get home from my sports and that leaves me with four hours of sleep a night,” an anonymous student said. “Teachers have maybe asked two times maximum throughout my years being here if I was okay after missing some school days, [and] whenever I miss days they just expect me to catch up and don’t offer their help when they see me next.”

Test scores are important for students, but without being in the right mental state they don’t mean much. There is a big correlation between mental health and academics. Being in a good mental state is crucial for students as it impacts their overall life, academics and future. Recent studies have shown that academics have been the reason behind increased stress among highschool students, and that too much homework is a factor for students’ downfall. Kids that struggle with depression and anxiety often start experiencing poor grades, as it’s harder to concentrate or even attend school at all. With facts like these, it’s clear to see that school is a big factor for student’s mental health struggles.

To me, it seems a lot of teachers fail at noticing these struggles. I understand teachers aren’t trained to be a mental health professional, but most teachers are being trained to see the warning signs that a student is struggling. Researchers from the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) found that more than 1 in every 3 students have mental health struggles in highschool also, while 60% of college students have met the standard for having mental health problems. They also found that homework has a detrimental impact on students’ lives. In a study conducted by Stanford Graduate School of Education, the researchers concluded that an excessive amount of homework can lead to stress, sleep deprivation, weight loss and exhaustion.

The heavy workload in high school is taking a toll on our mental health, and it would be great if teachers could actively make the effort to recognize and help us out a bit more.