Mental health is something that requires a lot of care, especially for high school students. Despite this, there is difficulty for South students accessing these crucial resources. South is a school that provides a very solid variety of support for students who may be struggling with mental health related issues. The school-based clinic provides students with free therapy, allowing for professional support for the students who are able to access this resource. There are also many counselors that students have access to that are able to provide some guidance and support to those actively seeking it out.
While South itself is doing its best to provide resources for students who need support, there are still many cases where the services South provides may not be enough for students. A South High student who requested anonymity said, “I feel like South had very few options, and what they did have was hard for me to get.” The student also mentioned that they found it hard to try and reach out due to the pressure of being in school, saying, “I didn’t want people I knew seeing me.”
The environment that has been created at South—and at any school—is that this is a place where students typically have pressure put on them. This makes the mental health resources provided here at South that much harder to pursue, with the association of school inherently turning a decent amount of students away. For many students, school is a place that they have to go due to the need for an education rather than a place they want to go, which adds to the difficulty for many to feel comfortable approaching school-based mental health resources.
There are many students who have similar feelings to the one person mentioned here, struggling to reach out both in and out of school for any mental health resources. There is a common belief shared by many people that most mental health resources can be both hard to find and expensive and inaccessible. There is a lot of truth in this belief, however, there are a lot of resources that do not have to be expensive outside of school. The largest struggle that most will face is being brave and actively seeking out the help that they want.
The most important thing for anyone interested in taking better care of their mental health is finding the proper motivation to actively seek out the resources they may need, even if it is hard to find something accessible. The anonymous student mentioned, “I didn’t know where to go after South, which made me lose motivation altogether.” In a place as large as Minneapolis, there are many different programs that are available to most students, with a few drawbacks.
A large issue for many at South is tied directly to their age, with many unable to access a lot of different resources without the knowledge of their parents or guardians. While some may find it easy to ask their parents or guardians about finding mental health support, there are a lot of people with plenty of reasons that make them feel like they are unable to go to their parents or guardians about these sensitive issues. Even if there are resources available for them that do not need the direct involvement of their parents, there is the additional concern of what is being said by the person is or will be shared with their parents. However, for the vast majority of these programs and resources, everything is completely confidential and will have conditions that will likely be established early on if something discussed will be shared with parents.
With the many established restrictions both in and out of South, there is a clear need for improving the large barrier to entry surrounding students’ mental health at South. There is no easy answer or solution for most issues surrounding this process of finding the help a student needs, but there are ways in which we as South can move forward in helping our fellow peers find the help they need. We need to embrace these types of discussions in and out of the classroom because even if the vast majority of people pay no mind to what is being said, it could inspire a single student to find the help they need for their own well-being.
