Mental Health in Schools Essay Example

Mental health in schools is a rapidly increasing problem throughout the United States. More and more children are being diagnosed with a mental disorder such as anxiety or depression. Children as young as six are developing signs of mental illnesses and it is becoming increasingly prevalent in schools. In order to help fix this, schools should implement a system to help prevent students from falling into a state of depression. While most schools have counselors, they are only trained to go so far. Some students will try to receive help from a therapist but most are completely booked due to the pandemic. Most students hold the thoughts and feelings inside, allowing them to grow worse. This causes a large amount of school burnout and can eventually lead to self harm or suicide. Schools need a program in which students can turn to for help without feeling like it isn’t helping or they can’t trust it. The program should be an easy to follow system. Students should have the choice to remain anonymous or talk face to face, as remaining anonymous helps students feel more secure and signing up should be easily accessible to everyone via a google form or sign up genius. 

The program should also take into account that some students don’t want to listen or tell people about their problems and would rather keep them inside. There is also the problem of funding. While some schools can easily afford to put this program in place, other schools may struggle financially and have a hard time putting this program together. In order to fund this program schools should hold fundraisers or get a loan from their state government. Schools also may be able to slightly raise taxes. All of this should be enough to hire and pay trained counselors or therapists.

Students also need to pitch in because the program is useless without them. It is extremely important to treat mental illness at a young age because the longer mental illness is allowed to degrade a person's mind the harder it is to start treating it. “Delays in treatment lead to worsened conditions that are harder, and more costly, to treat. For people between the ages of 15-40 years experiencing symptoms of mental illnesses, there is an average delay of 74 weeks (nearly 1.5 years) before getting treatment. “ (“Mental Health in schools”). This goes to show that not nearly enough is being done for people, in school or out of school, with mental health issues but people with mental health issues aren’t doing anything to stop it. The program would help with this as it is meant to help students who feel insecure about themselves choose how they want to present themselves and their problems to their counselor. Whether that’s remaining anonymous or doing it subtly, it depends on how the student chooses.

While not enough is being done to help people with mental health issues, there is also the problem that it can be hard to tell whether someone is doing ok or not. Some people are able to keep a straight face, keep smiling, and appear as if they are doing fine, making it hard to tell if someone is struggling mentaly. This is why, in order for the program to work, students have to be open and remain open about why and what they are struggling with. Dealing with students who aren’t responsive and don’t provide any information on how to help them or what they need help with is a struggle for therapists and counselors. They can’t do anything for the student and end up getting blamed for not having helped. With this being said it is very common for students to be recluse during their time with their counselor making it important for counselors to have a  couple of their first counselling sessions with their students be more like a meet and greet where the two get to know each other. 

All of this put together should help towards stopping the drop of mental health in schools and help decrease the number of students with mental illnesses but something else arises. “Whether treated or not, the children do go to school. And the problems they face can tie into major problems found in schools: chronic absence, low achievement, disruptive behavior and dropping out.” (“Mental Health In Schools: A Hidden Crisis Affecting Millions of Students”, NPR). Students are still going to school, without any break days or a plan to help them, with mental illnesses. The program should introduce a plan for those students. A flexible schedule and help with school work should be provided. Students may also be able to call in and request a day off, like a teacher would for work. This stops these students from falling under the weight of school work.

Some students have also had bad past experiences with other therapists and counselors and may not think that the program is trustworthy and not just a waste of their time. In an interview done by NPR it is revealed that one simple thing kept Kaite, the one being interviewed, from feeling any better. “During all this time, she says, not a single principal or teacher or counselor ever asked her one simple question: "What's wrong?" Many therapists and counselors attempt to work around the question of what's wrong instead of just simply asking it. While some students may not respond thoroughly, others may spend time thinking about their answer and provide a reasonable response, providing the therapist or counselor with the information needed to help the student.

Using all of this information schools should implement a program to help students get through and recover from mental illnesses. Students aren’t receiving the help they need and when they do receive it, it is usually too late or delayed. This leads to school burnout and even self harm or suicide, but this can be prevented with a program. Counselors are only trained to go so far but this program has trained therapists and is easy to use and is flexible to each student. It provides a way out for students with mental illnesses. Schools need to implement a program such as the one provided as it is a step in the right direction and is how the U.S. will solve the problem of deteriorating mental health in schools.