Readers blog: Secondary schools must provide a mental health studies class

I am seventeen years old and currently in sixth year. 

I am aware that Ireland has one of the best education systems in the world, and that our graduates are highly skilled, and to get to that point, work in sixth year is one hundred percent necessary.

But sadly the mental health of our youth deteriorates rapidly and daily.  I haven't looked up statistics, because I do not have to.

If you asked me to list a number of my friends, or even just people I know , in their teens that have mental health problems, I have no doubt I would not run out of people to name.

It is horrible but it is the truth.

I will never deny my own mental health problems. I spent so long in my teenage years thinking I was "dramatic"and "hormonal", that I could have spent finding ways to help me deal with anxiety and low moods.

Because of not fully being aware of the depth and danger of my problems in my earlier teenage years, I am left in a dark, dark path.

It has all caught up with me and I now find myself, in the most important year of my life, unable to get up for school some days, and when I do, running to the bathroom the minute I come home to cry and cry , to scream and cry.

I am risking my own future because of the demons in my head and I am sure so many others are.

Many lucky people have not experienced anything of this sort, and will brand me and others dramatic and over-sensitive, I envy these people.

I sat across from my mother last night and cried for an hour without speaking, because the words get trapped in my throat and the screams I yearn to cry manifest into pounding headaches that never cease even after I sleep.

School terrifies me because even though so many other people are experiencing what I am, my thoughts make me believe different; I am alone in a class of 40, I am the only one who doesn't know what I am going to do after secondary school because I certainly won't get the points I need and I am the only one who goes through life feeling numb because it is safer than feeling anything at all, of course my thoughts will end up concluding differently in reality, but in the moment it feels like it will never end, the pain , the frustration, the anger, the hurt , the overthinking.

Again, I am speaking from my own experience and know so many others who go through this , maybe in different ways but still go through this.

My school, and teachers are excellent , they do what they can but they cannot change the way a student thinks and feels.

My heart breaks every day and I cast myself into the darkness and solitude of my room, I want more than anything to change my ways but sometimes, nothing works.

The one thing I am grateful for are friends and family, I escape all this when I am with them, I can smile, I can laugh and I can escape the numbness and fear of the unknown, but

I want more than anything to not depend on somebody else for how I feel about myself.

What angers me the most, is I completely believe, my state of mental health would never have reached the level it is at, if there was a class offered from 1st year up, to students that discussed every part of any mental health disorder.

Allow students to feel like they can talk about it without being feared of being called an attention-seeker, make it natural for people to talk and discuss things!

It would certainly boost morale and form stronger bonds in first year students, that I believe could prevent bullying.

I've watched family and friends be broken from mental health issues , I've come close to it cracking me, but as a hopeful future teacher, I do not want the youth in future years to sit in silence in their rooms at night, and feel a pain nobody can describe.

It is hard when you are in that mindset, to know that you are not alone, but nobody truly is ever alone.

But we need to rise up together , and do what we can to make it necessary for secondary schools to provide a mental health studies class, looking into why and how depression, anxiety, eating disorders etc arise and h ow people can deal with them, an open discussion.

The key to any issue in any part of life, is to talk about it, no matter how hard.

Nothing can improve in my eyes, until people in charge take mental health seriously.

Thank You.

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