Mental Health
In describing their return to high school in fall 2021, many students identified their own mental health as an area of concern. They described difficulty adjusting to in-person learning, the pace of the school day, and homework expectations. Many described feeling that the culture of their school has changed and that the fun aspects of belonging to a school community have diminished. These students asked that their teachers recognize their struggles and that their schools provide meaningful supports.
What 20 Students Had to Say About Mental Health
“I hope that whoever reads this survey reads my response. We NEED mental health breaks. We need support. We need someone to teach us how to deal with depression and anxieties and panic attacks. We don’t talk about this enough because we feel ashamed to be having these feelings. We feel like disappointments most of the time. I realize that there are counselors to help us, but to speak to a counselor you have to write a formal email and set up a time. I wanted to see a counselor to help me with my mental health since the pandemic and I felt scared and ashamed to. We need required anonymous counselor checkups to help us. Mental health is serious and so far since the start of the school year I have seen Zero efforts to support students. I heard that teachers are allowed mental health breaks when they are overwhelmed but where are our mental health breaks?”
11th grade, prefer not to say, white
“I feel like some of my teachers are moving too fast, even when we were online learning. They treat it like it’s normal and give us a lot of work to do, but we’re in a pandemic. We’re going through struggles and mental issues and problems at home and even if we do tell them, what’ll they say? Do your best? And still give you a sh*t grade. I feel like they don’t understand that everything going on in the past few years is affecting students, because it’s our futures we’re worried about/trying to work on. Not our classwork.”
12th grade, girl/woman, African American
“The way the staff is running this school is super stressful for all of us. Last year we were at home – no interactions only zoom and things were hard. They expected us to come back and be okay with everything but they’re enforcing so many rules and punishments and being so hard after such a hard year. It has taken a huge mental toll on me and I’m sure many others as well. I understand we all want everything to be normal but this is not normal. Students used to love school but … it’s not the same anymore. It feels like working at a 9-5 job, miserable. School should be about learning and FUN. Nothing is fun here anymore and all of it is causing an immense amount of stress.”
12th grade, girl/woman, prefer not to say
“Coming back to school was an incredibly tough thing to do for me, especially the first few weeks. … It’s exhausting to sit down for 2 hours again. …They also didn’t even implement the (mental health) plan for us, just two days of filling in a journal that has nothing to do with restoring anything in our eyes. It feels like they just shoved a bunch of stuff in our faces and didn’t help us ease into in-person learning or even try just because they thought they couldn’t do anything to help us emotionally. They could have tried reaching out to students but didn’t. They can just continue to keep us safe from COVID and provide as much mental health resources as possible. Finally, they can actually listen to us.”
12th grade, boy/man, LatinX
“The whole (school’s mental health program) is incredibly tone-deaf and in general a terrible idea. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable and in general feels like teachers are trying to give us therapy, which only serves to make me want to avoid them. I feel singled out during those periods. I do not want to share “my feelings” with my classmates, and especially not my teachers. I cannot fathom why you would start this kind of program without asking students first whether it would be helpful.”
12th grade, prefer not to say, white
“I’m so annoyed by the way stuff is being addressed. I have been here for 3 years and I don’t want school to feel like a burden. That makes me feel so awful and unimportant. I want the system and organization of this school’s necessities to change for younger students and soon-to-be high schoolers. I hate the way that I think and feel, I hope not many students are going through this and dealing with the struggles and expectations of the school.”
11th grade, girl/woman, African American
“A lot of kids are struggling and have missed a whole year of school from being online. Most teachers are just going back to the way it was and giving us assignments and things that we are not physically or mentally prepared for. We also have lives outside of school as well as students who are taking classes they don’t even like because their parents are making them. We need to cut these kids some slack as well as tell the teachers to give some respect to us because nowadays we are not going to take their sh*t.”
11th grade, girl/woman, LatinX
“The whole covid thing really did an effect on my mental health. When we were doing online, I felt trapped inside my home and like we were repeating the same day over and over again and nothing new was going to happen. I felt empty but now that we are doing in-person school again I’ve been doing better and I do not feel trapped inside.”
11th grade, girl/woman, LatinX
“I think a lot of people have realized the things that actually matter to them, and that there are a lot of things that don’t matter as much as they thought they did. I think people’s priorities have changed, and they are putting their mental health first, and making time for seeing friends and family, and things that were taken for granted before the pandemic. I think teachers should realize that over half the school hasn’t even really experienced high school yet, and those who have, haven’t been back in 2 years.”
11th grade, girl/woman, white
“I feel like with all of the covid 19 drama going on it has made a huge impact on my life. It really stresses me out and i feel like it put me behind a year. I feel like I’m not in the right grade, if that makes sense it makes me feel behind. I’m so very stressed with all of my schoolwork this year and I feel like it’s starting to take a toll on my mental health.”
10th grade, girl/woman, African American
“This change has been mentally exhausting for me. Adapting to the online schooling was difficult but we managed, now we have to un-adapt from that and go back to in-person school. It’s not easy and I’m stressed everyday.”
12th grade, girl/woman, African American
“We suddenly had all our homework at once and we had to take tests without notes. Adults may answer, ‘Okay, get over it. You did it like this every year before.’ But you have to remember that for us, the pandemic started when I was in 10th grade, and now I’m a senior. That’s a huge chunk out of my life when I’m this young. Sure, it was like a year and a half, but that’s a long time when you’ve only been on the planet for 17 years. So yeah, it’s KIND OF HARD going back to normal school at normal speed.”
12th grade, not answered, white
“I feel like ever since Covid happened things just feel weird and different. Like we’ve been going to school most of our lives and then we had to take year and a half off and do online school and that was hard. I think it is mostly my mental health that hasn’t been doing good since the pandemic. With not being able to see people and socialize it was hard to deal with. Now going back to school just doesn’t feel the same.”
12th grade, girl/woman, white
“I can speak for many of the other students I’ve spoken with when I say that very few people feel like they can actually trust their school counselor. Besides, most people would feel uncomfortable exposing themselves like that anyways. The school trying to force everyone back to normal feels like the school is impatient with our mental health and wants us to “just go back to feeling better already!”, like we’re a flock of livestock.”
12th grade, boy/man, Asian
“Calm down on the homework. I can’t do all of it while trying to pursue the things that I actually care about. It’s so overwhelming and i’m forced to do it, resulting in worse mental health due to not doing more fun things.”
12th grade, boy/man, white
“Stop dumping work on kids like crazy, as most of the teachers have been doing. we are all very stressed and we NEED time to adjust back. I did not receive any time at all to adjust to being around thousands of people all day right after being around practically no one for a year and a half. It really took a terrible toll on my mental health and it’s frustrating. Teachers just kind of expected kids to be ready for butt loads of homework and schoolwork all the time. Personally, it feels like no matter how long I do work for, I can never catch up. It makes me want to drop out.”
12th grade, self-identified, white
“The pandemic really changed my mental health, I felt a decline when the pandemic first started and I’m just trying to get back to being on top of things, caring, and being overall happy. I lost my direction when the pandemic happened and overall need help in trying to find my way through high school and getting to college. ”
11th grade, girl/woman, Asian
“The pandemic changed me moreover mentally rather than anything else. I think I’m the same person but I have changed as who I am and my goals in life because the pandemic gave me time to get to know myself in more of a spiritual level than anything else.”
11th grade, girl/woman, LatinX
“I think during this period of change, you have to consider that everyone now has a different mentality than before covid. Some people used to love their hobbies, but now they can’t find the motivation to do it anymore or it just genuinely doesn’t make them happy anymore.”
11th grade, girl/woman, LatinX
“I think that COVID has really impacted mental health and so teachers need to be more understanding with students as do administrators. The policy of having detention for any tardies is absurd and does nothing to help students. Rather the school should check in on students who are tardy by having them do lunch appointments with their counselors. This way the school can really sift through which students were just having a rough day, are having a rough week, or need some serious help. This policy would be much rather than the absurd punishment of giving detention to all tardy students.”
11th grade, girl/woman, LatinX
Explore the full Students Weigh In series
Education in the United States, as across the globe, changed dramatically when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools across the country to close in spring 2020 and over 50 million students were asked to learn remotely.
In response to a stark lack of firsthand data about how the pandemic and school closures were affecting students’ lived experiences YouthTruth explores what students have to say about learning and well-being during COVID-19 in our series.
