Resource Center

• By Turner, College Freshman • IDRA Newsletter • September 2024 •

Students’ mental health is important to me because I had a period when I wasn’t motivated to do well in school and didn’t feel that it mattered to my school if I was. I felt my education wasn’t prioritized by my school and felt very invisible when it came to trying to address my feelings.

I’m also very interested in this subject because I have younger siblings who I hope would avoid what I went through. I want to advocate for a change in our schools and how they treat their students.

Hello, my name is Aniyah Turner. As a recent high school student, I saw that mental health isn’t really talked about or given a lot of thought. Many schools I have visited, too, don’t appear to take the student’s mindset or health into consideration. Many teachers and others treat students with no compassion or don’t have adequate mental health resources to give to students. Mental health is very important, and the lack of support can cause problems, including with our academics.

Students deserve better mental health support in their schools to help with overall academic performance and better quality of life, to get the most out of their learning, and to academically and mentally be okay within their school walls.

Teenage students don’t get to express themselves while they are at school. We are often burdened by emotional conflict about what the school has going on. Many students in my school district and others deal with academic pressures while trying to appease people in their lives.

There are significant numbers that indicate students are experiencing mental health issues. According to the CDC, 42% of students across the country report that they have symptoms of depression or feel sad and hopeless. This is a 21% increase since 2011. Fifty-seven percent of those students identify as female. (CDC, 2022)

Unfortunately, these things didn’t seem to be addressed by my school board, which made me wonder if they cared about students’ mental health.

Mental health issues in our schools have recently gone up after the state took over our school district. It has caused a ripple effect of stress to the principals, teachers, students and parents (Houston Chronicle, 2024). I worry that this will cause an academic decline and even higher rates of students being likely drop out.

Students deserve better mental health support in their schools to help with overall academic performance and better quality of life, to get the most out of their learning, and to academically and mentally be okay within their school walls.

Resources

CDC. (2024). Poor Mental Health Impacts Adolescent Well-being. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Houston Chronicle. (May 31, 2024). We asked HISD community members how things are going 1 year post-takeover. Here’s what they said.

Aniyah Turner is a college freshman from Houston and a member of IDRA’s Youth Advisory Board.

[© 2024, IDRA. This article originally appeared in the September edition of the IDRA Newsletter. Permission to reproduce this article is granted provided the article is reprinted in its entirety and proper credit is given to IDRA and the author.]