It’s no secret that teens are in danger of succumbing to the mental health struggles that plague their demographic. The problem is, there are so many different personalities at a school and each different personality has a contrasting home life. A teacher that is having financial problems or difficulty in their marriage, may be more susceptible to lash out at her students. Now suppose a student comes to school after witnessing a fight between their parents. The teacher is perturbed and tells the students to “be quiet” and she gives them a pop quiz. The student is already fragile and takes the teacher's aggression as a personal vendetta. Of course, a person looking from the outside could say, that’s silly, your teacher isn’t targeting you but in the mind of a hormonal teenager, this is a personal attack. Now suppose that a hormonal teenager retaliates by saying a smart comment that the teacher perceives as disrespectful. She may yell at him/her, send them to the office, or maybe she will send them to the in-school suspension room. These infractions then go on the student's record as a mark that this is a problem child with a behavior disorder. As the child goes through school, that one incident will let the next teacher know to watch this kid. The next teacher will have her guard up, waiting for the student to be disrespectful the way he was with the prior teacher. Perhaps the teacher is so biased because of her co-workers' experience and she doesn’t take the time with the student, contributing to his failure. Now, consider how many students are enrolled in the public school system. How many of them experience hardships at home? How many of them haven’t seen their parents in a few weeks, but they can’t tell because the school will call social services and he’ll get placed into foster care? What about the kid whose parents are addicted to drugs? Last night after school, a student found his mother unconscious on the floor. She’s breathing so he knows she’s alive but he can’t get her to wake up, and she has a needle stuck in her arm. He can’t call the cops because if he does, his mom will get into trouble again and he wants her to get better so she can be the mom she used to be. He wipes her face with a wet towel and tries to wake her. He remembers the Narcan she got from the health department in case this happens. He grabs it and sprays it in her nose, she wakes up but the medicine makes her irrational. She starts hitting him and throwing things. He follows her around the house to ensure she doesn’t hurt herself. After the medicine wears off, he puts his mommy to bed and tucks her in. After all this, he has to work on a project that’s due tomorrow. Mom has promised all week that she would help him but she’s been busy every day this week…now this. He fires up his iPad but his mind is racing and the natural response that the events have caused, keeps him from being able to concentrate. He tries, but he’s so exhausted that he falls asleep. When he wakes, he sees that he drooled on his notes and his computer died, losing all of the work he had tried to do. It’s late and he has to catch the bus because mom is still sleeping off the Narcan. Staying home isn’t an option because there isn’t food in the house and he hasn’t eaten since lunch yesterday at school. Also, he has football practice after school and he doesn't want to make his coach mad. He’s got the same clothes as yesterday because the dogs have peed on the only other outfit he has. His hands are tied. He wants his mama to get better but if he tells anyone, they will take him away from her. Who will be there to protect her then? Telling a responsible adult isn’t an option. He’s got to put a smile on his face and go about his day as if nothing is wrong. Just to get to school and his teacher uses harsh words. She’s having a bad day too. Not only did she and her husband argue about money last night, but she was late this morning because her children gave her a hard time getting out the door. Because he got sent to ISS, the student didn’t get a chance to tell his teacher that he couldn’t finish his project, leaving him with a zero. How many situations like this happen every day in schools all over the world? One bad day caused this student to get a bad grade, which brought his grade down and he will be kicked off the football team. Football is the only normal thing about his life at the moment. It’s his only outlet to relieve stress. As a teenager, he may feel like his life is over if he doesn’t have football. He might as well act out now, at least he’ll feel better after he hits someone. Why go to class? He’s going to fail anyway. How many kids feel this way? Did the boys that shot up Columbine have a bad day that led to another, to another, to another? What about the bright young boy who felt like things were so bad, that his only option was to kill himself? Could someone have helped him? Dr. Will Cole, a functional medicine expert, says there has been a significant increase in mental health issues among children in the United States. There has “been a twenty-fold increase in attention-deficit drug consumption over the past 30 years. And autism now affects 1 in 54 children” (Cole, 2024). According to the CDC, 29% of high school students in 2021 experienced poor mental health, and 42% felt persistently sad or hopeless. In addition, 22% of students seriously considered suicide, and 10% did attempt suicide. Nearly half of LGBTQ students have considered suicide, far more than their hetero counterparts. Additionally, black students are at higher risk of mental illness than students of other races (CDC, 2024). Why are there so many students who struggle with mental health? Does mental health correlate with academics and school behaviors? If all adults struggle with the stresses of life, how can we expect teenagers to thrive? Understandably, a teacher is a regular person, who responds to daily life stressors like everyone else. Then it should be acceptable for a child to act out if their homeostasis is imperfect. Since the 70s there has been a major increase in the amount of medicated children who have been diagnosed with a mental illness (Cole, 2024). Since we aren’t seeing it getting better, shouldn’t we try to correct or improve their homelife so they can thrive instead of just medicating them? Is the school system forcing our kids to have these stressors? They’ve created a system that makes it harder for an at-risk child to succeed. Something should be done about students who struggle academically. Helping them thrive and be the best they can be. Students who struggle in high school lack self-confidence, they are more likely to drop out of school, leading them to be more likely to get a lower-paying job than their peers who didn’t struggle as drastically.
Think about the young student, Johnny, described previously. The next morning he got some water at the fountain by the bus stop. He goes to class, 1st period. Poor guy, he falls asleep during instruction time because he’s still exhausted from the night before and he didn’t sleep well on top of his school-provided iPad. That teacher knows him and suspects his home life is harder than it should be for a child his age. He’s normally talkative and makes jokes all through class which gets on her nerves. So she looks the other way and lets him get a little rest. She knows he’s got a project due today for the next class because he’s been complaining about it all week. Wishfully she thinks that, just maybe, his mom finally helped him, keeping him up late, which made him sleepy today. The bell goes off and he pops up, his teacher scolds him, jokingly, about getting more sleep tonight. She hands him notes from the day and tells him to use them for homework tonight. She doesn't want to be too hard on him because he has told her how stressed he is about football, the project, and his mom. He never explained what was wrong with Mom and any time she asked, he dismissed her. When she’d press he would get defensive and tell her that his mom was fine, so she quit asking. She’ll make sure to ask him tomorrow how his project went. When he arrives at his next class, with the teacher who fought with her husband last night, she doesn’t want to hear a word from the kids today. She normally greets him when he walks in and today she was looking at her phone with an angry expression. He speaks, but she doesn’t hear him. Johnny thinks, Great! There is no way she’ll give me an extension now, she already hates me and he sits down and pulls his hoodie over his head. “Johnny!!! We have a lot to go over today so don’t fall asleep! You should have gone to bed earlier last night!!” says Mrs. Calhoun. Johnny rolled his eyes. “Young man, you better not roll your eyes at me, I’m NOT in the mood today!” To which he replies, “Man I didn’t even do anything, you just hate me because I’m black!” Johnny already feels inferior to her because she’s smart, she’s a teacher! He feels some inferiority because she’s a different race than him. Perhaps he lives in an area that is predominately white so the inferiority complex is understandable. This is just another incident to beat away his self-confidence. As it escalates, the teacher, unknowingly, takes out her frustrations on a poor kid that is on the brink of explosion already. But today she pushes too far and he just can’t take it anymore. He picks up a book and slings it, accidentally hitting another student, the teacher's daughter. This will eventually end up as an infraction on his behavioral plan, he’s had these blow-ups before. The teacher has to report it to his probation officer. He’s on probation because he beat up a kid on the bus who was picking on his mama and his smelly clothes. This is the second violation. He got caught stealing food from the gas station because he was hungry. The judge didn’t put him in jail because he felt sorry for him and knew the situation. You know the situation, single mom, absent father (that the judge put in jail), mom has had several drug charges but she keeps doing just enough to keep them from taking her son. His address is a section-8 housing so Judge Crawlford knows they don’t have much money. As a Christian, he has sympathy for Johnny. He lets him off the hook for stealing the food but tells him he won’t look the other way the next time. Well, next time has happened. Johnny lost his temper and threw a book, giving his teacher’s daughter a black eye. Judge Crawford can’t look the other way this time. He’s friends with Mrs. Calhoun, they go to church together. To recap, in a 24-hour period: Johnny found his mom unresponsive, saved her life, made sure she was safe, tried to do his homework, and made it to school just to get in trouble. Now, there is a threat that he could go to jail. Yep, little black Johnny who lives in suburbia with his heroin-addicted mother. Everyone in town talks about them. They look at Johnny’s mom with disgust. Their property value has decreased drastically since they put those welfare houses in. He’s going to jail tonight, oh well at least he’ll have a hot meal. How on earth will Johnny have any self-confidence after this day? It’s impossible. He’s emotionally been beaten to a pulp. He feels like the scum of the earth, lower than rats. Maybe like the fleas on rats, worse than that, “amoebas on fleas on rats” (Grease, 1978). Surely anyone in their right mind, can't expect someone who felt that beat down, to succeed. It would be so much easier for Johnny to move in with his cousin and join the gang with him. That way he would be sure to have a bed and some food. Besides he’s going to need someone to help him get out of this trouble, and cousin Robbie sells drugs so he’s got tons of money.
Suppose things turn around for Johnny and he gets out of trouble, again, and he’s going to try to stay out of trouble. But he didn’t get that project done and that means he failed that class. It’s an important class so he got kicked off the football team, he was already on academic probation. Ugh, his girlfriend is the only good thing he had going for him and she’ll probably drop him now that he’s not on the team. She only wanted him because he was a football player. He only has two pairs of clothes and sometimes they stink. If he doesn’t have football, he has nothing. Obviously, his confidence is shot, but what’s holding him here? What’s the point? He might as well just quit school altogether. He can go to work at the factory without a high school diploma. If he can figure it out, he can save some money to find his own place away from his mother and all her lifestyle brings. Honestly, the pros outweigh the cons by a mile. Johnny drops out of school so he doesn’t have to worry about grades, social status, or social services snooping around. Luckily one of his teachers did mention a program that will bus him to work and help him learn a life skill. She gave him the number to the guy so that when Mom gets her check and pays the phone bill, Johnny will call him. Now that he has the promise of a job opportunity, he won’t have to worry about food…just gotta make it to payday.
Johnny does contact the program director about getting into the job corps. They devise a plan to get a high-school equivalency diploma as soon as he feels ready to give it the attention it needs. They both agree that Johnny has potential; he has just been given a crummy hand in life. The director helps him find transportation to a job interview at the local factory and even gives him tips on how to conduct himself in the interview. His old teacher reached out to see how he was and offered some encouragement. He goes into the interview feeling confident for the first time in years. He borrowed a tie that his dad had worn to court once before. He has a resume that Ms. Jones, the job corps director, helped him with. He walks into the building with his head held high for the first time in months. He is instructed to walk down the hall and wait with the others. He turns the corner and sees 25 other men that look like him. Same hair color, same eye color, same brown skin, and the same defeated look on their face that he was all too familiar with. Suddenly he realizes this is a place for screw-ups. They are probably going to work him to death like they did his mom and pay him the littlest amount possible because he doesn’t even have a high school education. He walks into the interview room and the old white lady never even looks up from her clipboard. He felt like a number, just like he did when he spent that weekend in jail. The CO didn't even know his name. He was Inmate #719376, not Jonathan Levon Washington III. He doesn’t like that feeling of being ignored, that’s happened enough times to last a lifetime. Jonathan gets the job and he is right. He works 70 hours a week for minimum wage but if he works overtime he gets time and a half, so that’s a plus.
Throughout the life struggles that John has experienced, his body has reacted. The outburst that he experienced as a kid evolved to heartburn, then stomach problems, acid reflux, high blood pressure, eating disorders, and diabetes. What is to keep it from turning to cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, or liver problems? All because a teacher and student had a bad day and led one kid down a path that ultimately ended in disaster. Now how many kids like Johnny are in our school system? There was no data about Johnny because his situation is hypothetical and questionable but it's not unheard of. Johnny’s story was a dramatization, but what about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (Columbine, 1999), Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook, 2012), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech, 2012)? What about people like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson? Were they like Johnny? Did they have mental health issues that caused them to act out when life’s stressors became too much? Perhaps. Perhaps there’s nothing that can be done. But maybe there is. The answer isn't obvious, and it will take a team of people to help. Whatever the answer is…something needs to be done about the mental health crisis in American children and teens. Because those mentally ill children eventually become mentally ill adults. Someone has to help them overcome or at least cope. Medicine isn’t always the answer.
References
CDC. (2024, August 6). Mental Health | DASH. CDC. Retrieved October 12, 2024, from https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/mental-health/index.htm
Cole, W. (2024). Brain Health. Dr. Will Cole. Retrieved October 12, 2024, from https://drwillcole.com/brain-health
Columbine. (1999, April 20). Columbine High School massacre [School shooting event]. Columbine, Colorado, USA.
Kleiser, R. (Director). (1978). Grease [Film]. Paramount Pictures.
Sandy Hook. (2012, December 14). Sandy Hook Elementary massacre [School shooting event]. Adam Lanza.
Virginia Tech. (2012, December 14). Virginia Tech massacre [School shooting event]. Seung-Hui Cho.
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