Research Paper Example: School and Mental Health

The show “13 Reasons Why” opened the eyes of teachers, parents, and even students to mental health issues in schools. The show has brought awareness from suicide and depression, making students know all over the world that if you are struggling it’s all right to reach out for help when you need it. In adolescents, 20-30% are diagnosed with a depression level found in adults (The Dave Nee Foundation “Facts About Depression). In addition, the biggest cause of it was because they worry about maintaining good grades and getting a good job after school(Mills “Depression and College Students”). School and mental health has been an issue for a long time, students from all over the country believe that this is because of the high amount of workload and the pressure from everyone around them about finding a steady job after college. Finally, students all over that are struggling can’t turn to anyone in the school because of the stereotype of asking for help means you’re stupid and it can also damage your reputation, so they can only turn to friends and family. All of this shows that schools don’t care about their student’s mental health, they only care about “preparing” us to go into the real world.

In the first place, why do students have so much work? Students are expected to work hard, volunteer, maintain good grades, and get into college; because of this, many students have extracurriculars making them extremely possible, so when the time comes for school, their only goal is to finish and submit, not sit down and learn this lesson. A past student said teachers assign way too much work. “According to most students, teachers assign way too much homework. Teachers assign one to two pages of homework each night and that may not seem like a lot, but it is. Almost all of the teachers assign about that much homework, so when you add it all up, it comes out to a lot more than you would think.” (Muehliep “Do Teachers Assign Too Much Homework?”). Why can’t teachers explain the work in class? In order for students to learn their work, they should be given less amount of homework so they can go through it and learn something from it. 

Secondly, students already have things outside of school that can cause mental health issues, and school is causing them to become worse. According to the NCBI, almost 10% of adolescents suffer from depression. Depression and suicidal thoughts were recorded, ages 18-24 in college. “We found that 34% of participants were freshmen students, 37% of them were second-year students (sophomores), while the remainder were in their last years of study. There were as many as 13.2% of freshmen students and 2.7–3.5% of students in their last years of study whose KADS results indicated depression.” (Mojs “Are Students Prone To Depression and Suicidal Thoughts”). Depression can affect students’ mental health, so giving them assignments on top of assignments isn’t going to get the work done, just make them turn it in later or not even in at all. 

When teachers notice a student struggling with work, they usually offer help. Teachers say they care about mental health, but then why do they immediately want them to finish classwork and homework? According to someone anonymous on OpinionPanel, this claim was immediately proven wrong. “Teenage drama” is a term that is constantly thrown around by teachers who are trying to cast out every shadow of a doubt that mental health problems could exist inside the minds of their own pupils. Schools refuse to recognize that in certain cases, they are actually the problem.” (Anonymous “Your School Doesn’t Care About Your Mental Health”). This evidence supports that teachers and schools usually think every issue is teenage drama-related and they don’t take it seriously. Now what happens if a student is showing signs of depression and suicidal thoughts and the school doesn’t give proper support? Are we going to see what happened in 13 Reasons Why; when everyone supported her after she committed suicide? Supporting these questions, “Schools do not understand any of this. What is the point of having pastoral care systems in place if teachers cannot understand the signs and won’t refer pupils to get the help they so desperately need?” (Anonymous “Your School Doesn’t Care About Your Mental Health”). This goes on to prove that for schools to follow through with their promise that they care, they need to give the correct care to their students that are struggling. 

Now, many teachers claim the strict policy of work is to prepare for the real world and college, but multiple sources say that high school didn’t prepare in the slightest way. “In my experience, high school did not prepare me for college. When I was in high school, I took the same classes every day, which helped me to memorize the materials for each class. In college, you have different classes on different days, and most of the time you have to teach the material about the class to yourself. College is much more intense than high school. Sometimes the teachers in high school will give you a good grade just for attending their class. In college, you are on your own.” (Kaohana “How Did High School Prepare You For College). Continuing this topic, if many college students say, high school didn’t prepare them for college, how does the workforce feel about college “preparing” them for the real world. Many work fields have said that college has not prepared them for a job and the real world. In line with this, Eric Duffy with Forbes has said that college doesn’t prepare specific majors. “In the four years I spent studying architecture, we did lots of sketches and learned about design. But we never built a building. We weren’t involved in the process of building one. That resonates with a lot of university studies. There’s a great deal of theoretical learning, studying history, and exploring ideas. But if someone were to spend those four years in the job market doing the job, they would come out a lot farther along” (Duffy “Doe College Prepare Students For The Real World”). A simple way how to solve this problem for everyone in the school system is to actually teach specific majors and not just assign work that won’t stick to them in the future.

In closing, schools have been proven to be a bad source for those students who struggle with mental health. Students that go from high school to college, college to the real world, have come to closure that the reason why schools assign so much work is because of the curriculum they are forced to teach. In addition, if teachers want students to teach, they should be giving them less homework and focus on teaching them in the classroom. Finally, in order for students to achieve the correct help, schools must not oversee the issues and give them the correct treatment.