Mental illness and substance abuse can scar any youth for the rest of their lives, and among IHS students, the issue appears to be real and common.

Meanwhile, psychologists and social workers at IHS seem to be primarily aimed at serving a specific group of students who are mandated to receive the services on a regular basis. Therefore, students in crises are often left unnoticed.

The Tattler editorial board attempted to address the issue but failed to reach an agreement. Should the IHS administration take a more assertive role in dealing with mental illness and substance abuse for the entire student body?

 

Yes.

Signed, Liz Rosen, Emma Karnes, Claire Saloff-Coste, Luca Greenspun, Bridget Fetsko, Annika Browning, Emma Roach, and Pearse Anderson

 

Mental health problems and illegal substance use among IHS students are real and common. Although statistics for IHS’s rate of mental illness are not available, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) says that 20 percent of youths aged 13–18 live with a mental health condition. NIMH also says that the average delay between the onset of symptoms and intervention is eight to ten years, a length of time that cannot be explained or excused by the ambiguity of mental-illness diagnoses performed on minors. The delay between when mental-health issues arise and when they are dealt with is completely unacceptable.

Existing programs at IHS that are meant to address these issues are ineffective and simply not enough is done at this school about mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, drug abuse, and other life-altering difficulties. The school should pursue more aggressive programs to deal with these mental health and drug abuse issues. Teachers and coaches are well-placed to intervene for the benefit of students grappling with mental health and should be trained in doing so effectively.

According to the school’s directory, IHS has three nurses, two social workers, and one psychologist. None of these health professionals regularly come in contact with students and it would therefore be unreasonable to expect them to take responsibility for noticing the changes in disposition associated with the onset of mental illness.

Teachers and coaches, on the other hand, see students almost every day and can come to be closely acquainted with each student, to the point that they are better-placed than our school’s health professionals to notice the symptoms of mental illness.

Some may question why it should be the place of teachers and coaches to intervene in the personal affairs of students, rather than parents. The simple fact of the matter is that some teenagers are uncomfortable sharing with their parents and may go out of their way to obscure the truth. Instead, students often share their struggles with their friends, who do not know how to help and can sometimes do more harm than good when they advise from a place of ignorance.

Obviously, it would be better if students felt like they could go to their parents, but they cannot be allowed to suffer alone until such a time. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in youths aged 10–24 (NIMH); even non-suicidal self-injury occurs at a rate of 8 percent in youths aged 7–16, according to a 2012 study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Given these statistics, inaction is impermissible.

It should be the school’s responsibility to provide teachers with the tools to help. As was mentioned previously, well-intentioned intervention can be more dangerous if it is based in ignorance or executed poorly. Every few years, training should be provided in recognizing the symptoms of mental illness. This training should also include an open workshop in which coaches and teachers are taught how to tactfully reach out to students and counsel them to seek professional help and open up to their families. Just having six additional trained and sympathetic people checking up on students when they see them in class every day can help symptoms of mental illness be caught early. With such a system in place, students will not have to struggle alone for so long before receiving help.

When two people interact 45 minutes a day, five days a week, 40 weeks a year, as teachers and students do, it is impossible not to form a bond, and coaches meet with students for even longer periods. Any teacher should want to help someone they think is suffering. Even if all a teacher wants is to impersonally convey information, the teacher must recognize that a student cannot learn well while simultaneously dealing with serious health issues alone. Therefore, to do their job well, the teacher should respond to the moral imperative to help as best they can.

Simply put, IHS is currently ill-equipped to fully support the mental health needs of its students. The connection between educators and students should be embraced and put to use. Teachers and coaches should receive the training they need to responsibly fulfill the moral obligation to help students struggling with mental health.

Involving everyone in the school community and fostering a kind and embracing environment throughout the school is crucial. It is the community’s attitudes that are most influential to the ways students express their own emotional problems and psychological distress and whether they disclose these symptoms and seek care. Putting such a program in place would be a great step towards supporting all aspects of health at IHS.

 

No.

Signed, Daniel Xu, James Park, John Yoon, Tristan Engst, Elen Uchigasaki, James Yoon, and Kenzo Uchigasaki

 

It is easy to note the proliferation of mental health issues and drug abuse by high-school students and turn to teachers and educators for help. After all, students who are suffering from such problems spend much of their time in school, and when their personal issues are left unchecked by their parents, shouldn’t it be the responsibility of teachers—whom students see multiple times every week—to come to their aid?

But things are not quite so simple. Yes, student drug use in high school is alarmingly high, but to immediately place the burden of solving the problem on teachers makes little sense in the context of the high school environment. Friends, teachers, and coaches alone are not as well-equipped as professionals who can methodically identify larger-scale environmental contexts where behavioral issues arise, which is necessary for prevention of these issues.

What effects would the introduction of psychological counseling and recognition of issues in the field of pedagogy bring to the classroom? Only a dilution of the foremost goals enshrined in teacherhood. No mathematics, science, history, or fine arts educators receive any semblance of benefit within the bounds of their respective curricula in being able to recognize when students have personal issues—there are jobs for people who wish to help students in that way, such as social worker or psychologist.

School is first and foremost a place for learning, not a mental health clinic. Any training teachers receive should maximize their ability to teach effectively. Promoting the training of teachers in recognizing students who are suffering from personal issues related to drugs and/or mental health is an inefficient use of time and financial resources when the matter it relates to should be completely separate from education in the first place.

If anything, such training pushes the burden of responsibility past a critical point for teachers, who are already struggling to keep up with the tasks of preparing teaching material and grading papers, not to mention painfully long working hours and often low pay. Forcing them to think about which students may be doing marijuana, or if the student in the corner who always wears long sleeves may be self-harming, could be an exhausting component for those who just want to teach and do it properly; as a result, not only the teacher but potentially the entire class suffers.

The mission to reduce the impact of behavioral health conditions among students can only be fulfilled by a team of professionals who specifically aim to address the problems at a larger scale. Professional therapists, social science experts, and the community at large, should provide a beneficial environment for relieving students with problems, not educators.

A large-scale strategy like this has specific advantages over strategies that focus exclusively on the individual argued above. Because this strategy targets a much broader audience, it has the potential to produce widespread changes that have long-term, substantial effects.

Especially in Ithaca, where drug use rates and cases of mental illness are relatively high, addressing this problem requires active, collaborative involvement of lawmakers, local officials, and community leaders.

As a community, we must make it more conducive for individual students struggling with the aforementioned issues to seek out help from professionals. If we really are to take student issues as seriously as possible, the answer lies in gathering reliable statistics, understanding and analyzing the social environments in which youths abuse substances or develop mental health issues, creating barriers that make drugs less accessible to youth, and spreading awareness as clearly and as far as we can.

To suggest that teachers should receive mandatory training in recognizing symptoms of addiction, depression and/or abuse not only flies in the face of other students’ education, but diverts the problem from its source and forces teachers to verse themselves in tasks completely unrelated to those specified by their job descriptions. A strong professional body should be introduced outside of the school to combat large-scale problems, keeping the matter separate from education while aiming to provide services for those with issues outside of school, so that they can lead healthy and productive lives.