Mental Health Week

Block 7

Explaining the Topic

Defining Mental Health → It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make healthy choices.

• Between 20% and 30% of adolescents have one major depressive episode before they reach adulthood (NCCP).

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• Mental health problems may lead to poor school performance, school dropout, strained family relationships, substance abuse, and engaging in unsafe sexual behaviors.

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• An estimated 67% to 70% of youth in the juvenile justice system have a diagnosable mental health disorder (NCCP).

Defining Stress

→ Stress is a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances

• 75% of high school students say they are stressed most of the time

→ Causes of stress are workloads, tests, finals, and standardized tests everyone has to go through.

→ 61% of teens 13-17 years old say they are under a lot of pressure to produce good grades.

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Explaining stress

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Teens under high enough stress and turmoil can acquire

• anxiety,
• become aggressive,
• withdraw from others,
• develop a drug/alcohol addiction

Stress can also have a role in a teen's physical health, it can cause

• physical illness
• drastic appetite changes.

The Issue With Stress

How does stress impact students?

• According to the 2022 MYVH survey, most stress in DRHS develops from school connections and academic challenges.
• Students struggle most with peer relationships and schoolwork. These challenges present issues with academic success and relationships, causing too much pressure.

“Stress affects me a lot. It becomes hard for me to focus and do my work. Stress just overworks me.” –Michael Strauss, Junior at Dakota Ridge

Michael Strauss

Alternative Topic - Anxiety

Pros:

• You educate those around you on the topic of anxiety
• Educating teachers on this topic will help them learn what anxiety looks like in the classroom.

Cons:

• Not every student suffers from anxiety.
• Anxiety can worsen under stressful situations, if we learn to manage stress we would also be learning to manage anxiety.

Why we did not choose this topic:

We decided against this topic because we think that stress is a much bigger issue within our school instead of anxiety. Also, stress and anxiety relate to each other and if you lower your stress levels, your anxiety levels can go down.

Alternative Topic - Drug Addiction

Pros:

• Recovery will help more motivation in schools
• Recovering will help sleep and teens won’t be as tired in school
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Cons:

Here’s Why We Didn’t Do This Topic:

Stress is big part of mental health, often drugs are used as a coping mechanism for the stress. Therefore the problem lead

• Not all people struggle with the drug addiction therefore we are reaching towards of a minor group.

Alternative Topic: Drug Addiction

Make Your Voice Heard Statistics

Statistics Pros:

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“The survey showed 76 percent of high school students have not used alcohol in the past 30 days and 84 percent of high school students have not used marijuana in the past 30 days.”

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This shows that many kids don’t drink, demonstrating the minority groups don’t have substance problems.

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Statistics Cons:

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• “35% of 12th graders smoked marijuana in the past year
• 21% of 12th graders smoked marijuana in the last 30 days
• 17% of 10th graders smoked marijuana in the last 30 days
• About 1 in 16 high school seniors use marijuana every day”

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The statistics of the cons demonstrate that kids use marijuana has a coping mechanism and there should be ways to lower the percentages. Even though they are still relatively low.

The Solution - How a Mental Health Week would address Stress issues at DRHS

• De-stress
• Allowing students to have weight lifted off of them and not worry too much about school
• Providing resources towards de-stressing
• Increase motivation
• Break from the routine of school
• Grounds people (yoga and meditation)
• Provide a comfortable environment
• Bringing students together
• Addressing the issue of mental health/teachers compassion towards students
• Reduces the pressures on students
• Safe space for students to talk about their emotions and issues in their personal lives
• Help Teachers Understand students and what they’re going through
• Allowing students to voice their concerns in a safe space
• Allowing teachers to make changes in their classrooms/interactions with students to help understand their needs and stressors

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Advantages

• Provides a way for teachers to connect with their students
• The teachers themselves get a break from the routine of Teaching
• Teachers have just as many mental health concerns and get a chance to learn about them.

Disadvantages

• Takes away from regular class time
• Some of the de-stressing activities are outside of school hours

Action Plan

• Step 1: The week of 5/1/22 is dedicated to mental health
• Step 2: A small group of students will help run the week with Ms. Koerner.
• Step 3: Get the students involved and excited!

Sources

American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/driving-anxiety

MakeYourVoiceHeard Survey 2022