Jefferson’s rigorous academic coursework and overall high expectations can lead to an environment filled with excessive stress. So, how can the student body support one another better? How can we use the resources already available to improve the student body’s overall mental health?
For example, we already have a wellness space at Jefferson—the wellness room— but we need to make its use more normalized. Being a school of nearly two thousand students, everyone using the wellness room at the same time is obviously not feasible. However, we could expand the capacity of the wellness room by having trained peer supporters. Peer supporters could go through basic training in empathetic listening. It would seem reasonable to make the wellness room a space that is normal, vital and utilized, and the peer supporters could bring the much needed human element throughout the school community. Although official training of students can seem like a drastic measure, instead of watching a video during advisory classes, a peer supporter could provide a more relatable aspect to other students who are seeking support.
Another variable with a sizable impact on student mindset is social media. Considering social media’s influence on our mental health, we need to keep teaching new students and remind current students the healthy boundaries for social media in their lives, but with a greater focus in regard to how it can affect school. Social media provides the potential to reach people who are physically far away and as a school with students from many areas—it can be a helpful tool. However, there are many factors that affect mental health and on the other side of things, there is no limit to the depth of how people suffer from its negative aspects.
Recent studies have shown that teenage girls are experiencing dramatic increases in levels of mental health crisis incidents compared to decades past. In addition, studies by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that among all high school aged students, suicide ranked the number 2 cause of death. New ideas like the Zero Suicide Campaign, seeking to improve mental health education could be brought to Jefferson to make the whole student body more comfortable hearing questions like “given all the stress you are dealing with today, have you had thoughts about committing suicide?” This could lead to educating all the student body that direct questions about suicide like this only help others and lead to better support of someone experiencing a mental health crisis.
While the high expectations held by Jefferson’s students at times lead to a loss of focus on good mental health, good mental health in students, staff, teachers and family members will benefit our surrounding communities.