Calla O'Neil '22 Wins Scholastic Art and Writing's Silver Key Award
Congratulations to Calla O'Neil '22 for winning the Scholastic Art and Writing's Silver Key award for her critical essay entitled “An Open Letter to Schools in the United States.” Read the essay below.
An Open Letter to Schools in the United States
Dear Schools Across America,
Did you know that one in five teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 have or will have a serious mental illness in their lifetime? This adds up to 60 million teenagers in the U.S. alone. On average, each of those teenagers will spend around 1,000 of their 6,000 waking hours per year inside your classrooms. In a society where mental health is becoming an increasingly prevalent issue, whose responsibility is to support and focus on the mental health of students? I would urge you that the responsibility is yours. You have the ability to create a better future for your students by reaching them at the optimal time, creating a safe environment, and saving lives.
First, you have the chance to impact students’ mental health at the perfect age. Adolescence is a crucial period for developing habits necessary for mental wellbeing, especially because half of all mental health conditions start at 14 years of age. Learning to adopt healthy sleep patterns, exercise regularly, develop coping and problem-solving skills, and manage emotions are all necessary to learn at a young age to maximize one’s mental health for the rest of their life. These strategies allow students to be able to combat the factors that play a part in one’s mental health outcome. Some of these factors include peer pressure, technology and media, home life, friendships, and socioeconomic problems. If a student does not have the foundation of knowledge on the importance of mental wellbeing and the skills to maintain it, these factors pose a much greater risk to their mental state. Between the ages 13 through 17, a student will spend approximately 5,000 hours inside your walls. With such a significant chunk of one’s developmental years spent in your classrooms, it is necessary for you to use some of those hours to teach them how to nourish their mental wellbeing. Before a mental illness appears in its full form later in life, you can reach students preemptively and teach them about the early warning signs of mental illness and how to take action at a young age, which can help reduce the severity of an illness and may even prevent its development entirely.
Not only should you use the extensive amount of time that students are in attendance to teach about mental health, but you should also make sure that the learning environment you foster allows students to feel comfortable addressing their mental health concerns. Despite the fact that 46% of Americans meet the criteria to be diagnosed with a mental health condition, the mental health stigma is highly common. Mental health stigma refers to the shame placed on people who live with a mental illness or seek help for emotional distress. This stigma stems from stereotypes that allow society to make quick judgments about someone because of their diagnosis. These stereotypes result from media depictions where the villain is often characterized with a mental illness, the widespread idea that mental health issues can be overcome if a person just “tried harder” or “stopped being dramatic”, or the common phrases such as “she’s crazy” or “he’s nuts” that we use to describe the behavior of a person with a mental illness. In schools, the high presence of stigmas can have a detrimental effect on students suffering from mental illnesses. In a study led by UCLA, 62,756 students were surveyed on their mental health and the stigma surrounding it at their school. To establish levels of stigma, the participants were asked whether they would be friends with a person or judge them if they knew that they had been treated for a mental illness. In addition, students were asked about their own mental health and if they experienced anxiety, depression, or suicidal thoughts. The study indicated that in schools where mental health treatment was stigmatized by their peers, students were less likely to acknowledge their own mental health struggles, and those who experienced suicidal thoughts were less likely to seek treatment. Because your students spend 5 out of the 7 days of their week in your buildings, all that time can severely influence them and how they think about mental health. If you can foster an environment of acceptance and support when it comes to mental health, the lack of understanding and misplaced fear that feeds the stigma can be reduced little by little, allowing students to feel more comfortable acknowledging their mental health struggles and seeking help.
Finally, you have the power to save lives. Here in the U.S., suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 10 and 19 years old. You have the ability to enact policies to combat these high rates. First, you can educate your staff on the typical symptoms of depression, which can include students falling behind in class, acting tired, lacking concentration, quitting their usual activities, and spending less time with friends. While it may be challenging at times to distinguish normal teenage moodiness and irritability from signs of deeper concern, teachers, who are around students for around 40 hours a week, are in a unique position to have a greater ability than the average person to differentiate normal adolescent behavior that they see all day from hints that something is wrong. By equipping staff members, and students as well, with the mechanisms necessary to identify and respond to a student who may be at risk for suicide, your institution will be able to identify those in danger before it is too late. Additionally, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, schools with screening programs can detect double the number of at-risk students and ultimately lower suicide rates. Two screening programs that are highly common are TeenScreen Schools and Communities and SOS Signs of Suicide. TeenScreen provides schools with free mental health screening questionnaires, directions on how to use and implement them, and guidelines on how to assist families if a student needs professional support. The SOS kits include classroom resources that educate students on how to recognize and respond to depression in themselves and others. Implementing one of these programs could be the difference between one of your students getting the help they need and committing suicide. There are likely students in your classrooms that don’t have a supportive network of family members or friends to watch out for them and check in on their mental health. However, you have the chance to be that support system. You have the chance to take action and reduce the number of students who lose their lives due to mental health struggles by implementing strategies for suicide prevention.
Your obligation to a student should not only be to teach them grammar techniques and geometry. It should also be to develop young people who can be successful and thrive in all aspects of their lives. Without proper mental wellbeing, the other aspects of one’s life—social, academic, athletic, family—are at risk to fall apart. With the opportunity to reach students at an early age, create a safe and destigmatized environment, and save lives, you and every other school in America have the ability to make a positive impact on today’s generation of students and future generations to come. We are counting on you.
Sincerely,
Calla,
Your Student