Medical science has emphasized the physical and mental health benefits of playing sports and has felt that social interaction has improved multiple people. While it has improved for many people, more and more sports are becoming more competitive, causing children to quit when they turn 13. Around 70% of students have dropped out because they didn’t like how high the bar was set. Researchers have discovered that when more young people compete intensely, some are challenged mentally with increasing anxiety and depression levels. Constant competition year round in students of all ages has a “fight or fight” mode that's triggered at sports events. Learning to manage stress can help anxiety levels lower. For athletes, it is important to have very realistic goals to manage competition stress and researchers want athletes to write them down to improve mental wellness (Young).
Mental health issues and youth suicides have seen increasing numbers in many families and students. The number of suicides and suicide attempts is increasing with students struggling with anxiety, depression, and aggression problems. A study conducted by the Maryland State Department of Education focused on student achievement, climate, and size of the school. But the size of the school was not an issue, but they believed that they should set a maximum school size for each grade of students. Another study was made by Dr. David A. Kaiser, and he believed that social interaction was caused by the aggression problems that were happening in school. Kaiser concludes that rejection, isolation, depression, and anxiety are the biggest issue across schools. Schools with fewer students had twice as many participants in extracurricular activities had smaller dropout rates, and had more friendships. But increasingly larger schools had school counselors and social workers to help relieve some of the mental health issues that were going on (Barnes).
Many factors including cyberbullying, peer pressure, and academic stress are preventing success for students in grades K-12. Most students have to deal with the pressure of extracurricular activities, homework, and high-stakes standardized tests. The most common school-related stressors are tests, friendships, homework, pressure, feeling less prepared, and busy schedules. Chronic stress is when you don’t have mental health support in place to help you, which leads to illness, anxiety, depression, lack of sleep, cheating, or using drugs. An example of chronic stress is when someone has a decreasing academic performance that causes anxiety levels to increase and leads to worse academic levels. Building social-emotional learning skills can help to relieve some of the stress that is generated at school. These skills can help students, control their emotions, have more self-awareness, develop good self-identity, and help reduce schoolwork stress (Navigate360).