Teenagers have mental health issues. Why don’t we help them?

It was January 2021, after a long day of virtual school, and a cold feeling of intense dread and an inexplicable feeling like I was going to die was taking hold of me.

I’m safe in my house – I can see the light where my mother is working downstairs – but I feel unsafe. I walk to my room turning off all the lights and sit on my bed. The task of breathing becomes laborious; any calm I had turns to gasping, panicked breathing, and the more I try to sit up, the worse the attack gets.

It’s not until I shove headphones in my ears and start a song that I finally calm down. I rock back and forth until the tears stop, then I get to my feet. It was my first panic attack. Navigating through uncharted territory, I felt terribly alone.

The following month, on February 3, a classmate committed suicide.

She was a few days younger than me, and imagining the pain she felt sends an electric shock through my nervous system. The impact of his death resonates throughout my community in the whispers we exchange, the sudden changes in our eyes, and the heaviness in our heels as we walk.

We are drowning.

The mental health of the students was already at an all-time low before the confinement; the pandemic has exacerbated the problem and strained the student-counsellor relationship. Counselors say anxiety rates are on the rise and with a big chunk of development missing in most students’ lives, social-emotional skills are also suffering. This hits LGBTQ teenage girls and college students especially hard, studies show.

In the 2021 school year, when I had my first panic attack, schools in my state of Georgia failed to meet the state-mandated 1:450 counselor-to-student ratio. They still don’t. That’s a far cry from the 1:250 ratio recommended by the American School Counselor Association.

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Students feel lonely – and they are

Without fully funded mental health services, students must suffer alone. Months after my classmate’s suicide, I felt isolated and depressed. I didn’t know how to manage my emotions and the idea of receiving help seemed inconceivable to me.

In the absence of trained professionals, we as students have to pick up our own pieces. Even when I was in pain, I found myself playing the role of ‘the therapist friend’. I would tell my friends about every panic attack they had, every suicidal thought – every seizure. I noticed isolated classmates with no one to talk to, people who didn’t feel safe enough to contact professionals. They often cited previous negative encounters as the reason. Appointments were hard to come by; meetings were uncomfortable or unnecessary.

It is not the fault of school counsellors. The role of the counselor has changed from a purely academic one to also looking after the mental health of students, many counselors are not sufficiently trained to meet the mental health needs of students, and counselors are often understaffed and are overworked.

An estimated 14 million students attend schools with police officers, but without counsellors, nurses, psychologists or social workers. The presence of officers instead of counselors in schools disproportionately pushes students of color down the school-to-jail pipeline and leads to escalation in situations that could have been diffused by an unarmed professional.

The presence of SRO signifies fearmongering and brutality, and increases incidents of excessive force, typically for black and Latino students. According to the Advancement Project, more than 25% of school police assaults were against students with disabilities or students who reported mental health issues, and more than 80% of victims of school police assaults since 2011 were students black.

There are systemic reasons why students are suffering and concrete steps we can take to ensure real safety in our schools, but divisive politicians instead blame critical race theory, African American studies of the AP and transgender youth who are simply seeking acceptance.

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Fund consulting resources – not culture wars

These politicians are funding culture wars, not children. Rather than enforcing “zero tolerance policies” that put students of color at risk, schools should focus on reforming the board and creating positive school environments and support systems.

They should respond to calls from school counselors for more staff and funding, as well as pleas for help from students, who, with the right support, all have a bright future ahead of them. Funding adequate counseling gives students the resources and strength to build a better life for themselves. It’s what we deserve.

In May 2021, I started to get better. I learned that asking for help was essential. I started seeing a psychologist. I explored new hobbies and rediscovered old ones. I didn’t just pull myself out of depression, I learned to cope – and I didn’t do it alone.

Now, well into my freshman year of high school, I know things aren’t perfect, but I don’t feel alone anymore. And I know that if I feel like I’m falling, there are plenty of people around who can catch me. Every student should have this support, especially those who cannot find it at home. We can fully fund mental health services in every school to meaningfully address the current youth mental health crisis; you just need to have the will to do it.

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