Mental health is an important issue for teenagers. Erika Green, a social worker here at Washburn Rural High School, said that mental health means having the capacity to be able to successfully adapt to the changes life creates for people.

“Mental health is very important because it makes us who we are as humans, such as relationships, feelings, beliefs, behaviors,” she said. She also said mental health is very important and you need to make sure you have “alone time” because studies show that having “alone time” helps you grow and it lets you focus on yourself. 

WRHS is a place where students come to learn and grow mentally and physically. They recently added another full-time social worker which makes three social workers along with seven counselors. We asked if society is making mental health known. Green said, “I don’t think society is taking care of mental health because 20 percent of teens live with diagnosable mental illness but 1o percent will never get professional help”. She added that people who can get help decide not to get help and keep trauma in.

Sharia Clark believes mental health is something that needs to be taken seriously.

“It is a condition that needs to be taken seriously because people have mental illness because of the trauma they have experienced.”

Self care is very important for combating mental illness because you need to make sure you take care of yourself before anyone else. “Personally I like to do face masks, make money, listen to music, find my inner peace ,and go on walks sometimes,” Clark said.  When asked what the school can do for mental health her response was, “Maybe if they had a room just for mental health, they would give us our own number of mental health days we can take because eight unexcused absences is not gonna count for the days I don’t wanna get out of bed.¨

Senior Javonte White said, “Mental health is very important because your mental health can make you do things you wouldn’t normally do, or make you think things you never thought.”

Bad mental health takes a lot of lives every day. White said, ”People say your feelings aren’t a part of your mental health but they are an enormous part of it. Your feelings and the way you present yourself control the environment, and how the people around you react.”

He also thinks that we should get a later start, an hour break or a group activity where we can calm down and have a time where we don’t have to worry about things.