Something true for almost everyone reading this is that our everyday lives as children were defined by going to school. We learned new things, manners, and how to live with other people, and we made new friends. Fun, right?
However, nowadays, school has taken on a whole new meaning for students. There are a number of reasons why school can be quite harmful for a student’s mental health, and we will be covering some of them in this list.
Bullying
Just about all of us probably knew at least one kid in school who deserved a good lesson in manners. Bullying is a great nuisance for students, for it turns the school from a healthy learning environment to a scary no-man’s-land.
Fatigue
If you walk through a school’s hall, you’ll probably see a bunch of drowsy students with endless bags under their eyes. This can be explained by students’ answers to an online survey conducted by researchers In the UK. When asked how they felt in school, 39 percent of the students simply answered that they were tired.
Panic Attacks
Agoraphobia can be a major cause of panic attacks, and if we take a look at schools, they are packed with seemingly endless masses of students scurrying from one class to another. Panic attacks can come from drug use or other factors, too, and two to three percent of teenagers will have a panic attack during a given year.
Panic attacks can be extremely frightening, and obviously, a student who regularly experiences them cannot study efficiently. Students suffering from panic disorder are often distracted in class or carried away by their thoughts, which is why they can easily be overwhelmed if overloaded with information.
Psychiatric Disorders
Secondary Or high school has undeniable effects on teenagers’ mental health, and the factors are almost unending: stress, anxiety, fear, bullying, etc. It’s no wonder that more than six percent of teenagers are taking prescription psychiatric drugs. These can be for anything from depression to ADHD, which can cause a student to easily get distracted and lose track of what is happening in class, making it dreadfully easy to fall behind on their notes, making it harder to prepare for tests or assignments, further digging a hole in their grades.
Students can be exposed to a great deal of worrisome situations in school, such as deadlines, social relationships, fear of failure, and so on. The overwhelming amount of things students have to think of, remember, and hand in is simply scary. And it is not getting any better; anxiety is on the rise among student.
Stress makes it very difficult to work, deal with school, and have healthy social relationships, which we often forget is critical to a child’s development.
Depression
Many students can feel crushed by the workload and pressure and resort to giving up, feeling the emptiness consume them. They detach themselves more and more from school, the teachers, everything, impairing their mental health and, of course, their grades.
Homework
Homework, a mandatory exercise demanded by many teachers in high school. It is not a fun activity; more often than not, it mostly consists of exercises to train the student for upcoming tests. A survey led by the University of Phoenix in America reveals that high school students have to deal with an average 17.5 hours of homework per week. This amount of homework may often result in late nights, stress, and fatigue, not to mention the pressure to do well, hand the assignment in on time, etc. And if students fail to hand in homework, they will get a bad grade, so they can’t allow themselves to just leave it. Everything must be done, or else . . .
Stress
Stress in school is very frequent. It has many occasions to manifest, and the overall pressure of “do well in school, get a good job†can be very crushing for students. And then there’s the amount of important life choices that arise during school, such as finding a college and what a student wants to do afterward. It goes on forever and can be pretty stressful. Then come the deadlines, homework, social anxiety, grades, and more.
Social Integration
An important factor for any worker in any working space, not only students, is the feeling of belonging. Feeling out of place somewhere is very bad for a person’s well-being, and students need to feel like they are a part of the school to be happy and safe. Otherwise, it can impair their work, mental health, or both. So imagine if, on average, more than half of school students did not feel engaged at their school. That would be catastrophic, i guess.