Content Warning: This article discusses topics regarding suicide, depression, and mental illness.
We’ve all heard the claims from various teachers: “We’re here for you!” “Mental health matters!”. But kind words can only go so far for the at least one in seven adolescents aged 10-19 who experience a mental disorder, according to the WHO. When mental disorders go untreated, they can quickly worsen and lead to suicide, which is, jarringly, the fourth leading cause of death among 15-19 year olds. Needham High School is aware of the mental health crisis in teens, and there are resources at the high school for struggling students. But after a year of online learning, full plates of assignments and extracurriculars, and for some, a lack of mental health communication between guidance and families, do NHS students really feel comfortable reaching out for emotional support? Do they even know where to go or what to do during a crisis? And what if they require support that the school can’t provide? There are a plethora of support systems available to NHS students, so why do so many feel like they have nobody to turn to?
Obviously, in an ideal situation, students would tell their parents if they are struggling, and parents would take appropriate measures.. However, that’s far from reality due to a lack of mental health awareness in so many families. The second-best option would be for students to talk to their personal counselors. Students are supposed to be able to rely on their guidance counselor for school-related concerns, and guidance counselors build this relationship by checking in with students ocaasionally . However, five of the eleven students I spoke to do not have an adult at school that they feel comfortable going to if they are struggling with their mental health. You’d assume that NHS students would be able to utilize their personal counselor -- someone specifically intended to help students with personal or emotional matters -- but four of the students I asked had no idea that they even had a personal counselor, and two of those four were sophomores and juniors. One junior said they were “only aware of the school side counselor and had never heard of the other one until just now. Even more students had no idea how to access their personal counselor. One 9th grader’s best strategy for finding their personal counselor is to “find out who to email on some…informational sheet from the very beginning of the year.” If first years are only introduced to their guidance options during the first few days of school, after being bombarded with information, how can we expect anyone to know or feel comfortable talking to their guidance counselors?
Even for students that know how to get into contact with their guidance counselor, there’s a lot of discomfort regarding talking to counselors about more serious, personal issues. This is totally fine for students who have adults outside of school that they feel comfortable talking to, but the NHS administration has to look out for the students who don’t feel safe communicating with their families. One first year student believes that “guidance counselors totally would [tell my parents something I don’t want them to tell], even if they say they don’t.” Their friend holds that same belief, so if they were struggling with something that they couldn’t tell their parents, the student reports, “I would go to my friends.” This is a scary reality that too many NHS students face: they may be put in a position of needing to help a friend in a crisis. Students’ peers shouldn’t have to take full responsibility for problems that teenagers simply aren’t equipped to deal with, especially when there are so many professional resources. One junior warned me that “a fish who doesn’t open his mouth doesn’t get caught,” a testament to how isolating it is for students to feel like there’s no adult that they could trust with information that they don’t want the whole world to know. If a student meets with their personal counselor once or twice, the news of those meetings isn’t shared with parents or guardians, so if the restrictions surrounding guidance counselors sharing personal information were more widely understood, students might feel comfortable meeting with one of these counselors before their mental health situation progresses and it becomes harder to handle without families involved. And if personal counselors took those first steps in checking in on every student early on in their high school experience, they would become a much more prevalent resource.
When pressing mental health crises are brought to the NHS guidance department, they can effectively and efficiently involve outside-of-school resources in order to help students in severe mental health crises. They have direct contact with the Needham Youth and Family Services, which offers counseling and therapy for free, and can help students who need more intensive care find psychiatric programs that best fit their needs. Of course, the guidance department needs permission from the parents before they involve a professional, which is a major barrier for a lot of students. Six of the students I spoke to had never asked their parents for any mental health support, and multiple first years admitted that they never would out of fear that their needs wouldn’t be supported. The head of Needham High School guidance, Tom Denton, has been speaking to the parents of each grade about the prevalence of mental illness in teens and the available resources. Most students are completely unaware of this and conclude that their parents wouldn’t understand what they’re going through. In turn, parents assume that nothing is wrong with their children and don’t think to offer up these resources. If the student and parent mental health information sessions are kept separate, students conclude that their parents wouldn't understand what they’re going through and grow more and more alone, while parents remain oblivious. This is why the Needham High guidance departments need to facilitate an open dialogue between students and families regarding mental illness and their appropriate responses, which can only occur when -- you guessed it -- students are made more aware of the mental health resources atthe school. As one of the same first years that didn’t feel comfortable asking their parents for professional support puts it, “if we don’t want to talk to the counselors in school, they should give us options and tell us how to talk to SOMEONE.” This “someone” absolutely exists in the form of personal counselors, teachers, therapists, and support groups, to name a few. Let’s open up the conversation in classrooms and promote these resources until not a single student feels like there are no options for them to turn to.
Speaking of the classroom, schoolwork and extracurriculars are the main source of stress in students. A little test anxiety most likely isn’t going to send somebody into a crisis, but when left untreated, the smallest concern can turn into a severe mental health issue that takes over a student’s life. And feeling “stressed” and “overwhelmed” mean very different things for different students; those with anxiety or depressive disorders can more quickly spiral into destructive thought patterns and behaviors as a result of these thoughts. The guidance department is working in overdrive to figure out solutions for the stressors plaguing high school students, so the responsibility to reduce extra stressors within the schools falls upon teachers. One first year pleaded teachers to do “basically anything to relieve the pressure of having incoming assignments and not knowing how to ask for help,” and a sophmore agreed that “teachers should be more understanding if someone’s struggling with something and not just give them half credit.” There’s only so much the guidance department can do if teachers aren’t willing to do everything in their power to stop these issues before they start. A little bit of compassion, or simply being checked in on could make a world of difference in so many students’ lives. And it’s not enough for teachers to only extend this grace to students that they know are struggling, because as we’ve seen, too many students don’t have anyone at school that they feel comfortable sharing their needs with. Many teachers are still operating under the belief that students who don’t submit assignments in a timely manner or do poorly on quizzes are “lazy” and “unmotivated” without stopping to question why a student might be feeling so apathetic. Mental illness presents itself in a multitude of ways, and teachers must be educated on these warning signs as well as the available resources so that they can advocate for students. To put it simply, bad test scores, missed assignments, and grade anxiety should all be treated with grace, and when they persist, it’s up to teachers to act on them before it’s too late. And to address the issues of students who simply aren’t putting any effort into their schoolwork, it’s worth examining whether they could use the assistance of a guidance counselor to help them get back on track, which is something their teacher needs to lead them to.
Needham High School has means of mental and emotional support, from guidance counselors to personal counselors to parent education programs to connections with professional services. But when we look at the sheer number of students who are still silently struggling, the 1 in 6 youth that reported considering suicide in 2019, we realize that most students don’t know how to access this support. Hopefully data from mental health surverys, such as the one recently sent to the class of 2025, will push the NHS staff to realize that students don’t have a wide knowledge of the support systems within their school and community, and until they do, the mental health crisis can’t be solved. Connections need to be built between students and their personal counselors early on in their ninth grade year, and rebuilt for the juniors and seniors that lost touch over the pandemic. Information surrounding mental illness, warning signs, and support systems can’t just be delivered once in a packet during 9th grade homeroom; they should be a constant conversation in homerooms, classrooms, and households. “Mental health matters'' isn't a catchy saying for teachers and administator to plaster on their walls, but a demand. A demand for those with the power to shape the minds of a generation to do so with compassion and awareness of the crisis that too many in that generation face, and to guide students to the resources that show them that they are not alone.