This blog post is a little different. Instead of simplifying a science topic, this post is a quick article written analyzing mental health issues among teenagers in Colorado (specifically Rock Canyon High School), focusing on the potential changes pre and post-pandemic. Enjoy and Read On!
Introduction:
As mental health issues are more widely discussed, their prevalence within adolescents is becoming more apparent. Early intervention and treatment are vital because many mental health conditions take root from an early age. These are the years when children are learning where and how they might fit into the wider world, and need access to resources to support them. With the development of world issues such as Covid-19, these struggles with mental health have only soared. With a concentration on youth, mental health has taken a toll on the health of local communities. This paper aims to define what mental health problems exist pre-pandemic and post-pandemic among adolescent teens.
Mental Health and Heightened Stressors
Mental Health is our ability to solve problems, maintain social connections, and improve our overall mental well-being. Mental illnesses are factors that affect someone’s mental health, specifically, how people feel and interact with each other. Mental illnesses include anxiety, mood, impulse and control, addiction, and personality disorders (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023). Often, these mental illnesses have catastrophic effects. Suicide is the leading cause of death among high school students in Colorado. 24.3% of High School students stopped doing their usual activities because they felt sad or hopeless (Colorado Health Institute 2015). One of the biggest problems includes access to mental health resources and targeting problems at the start. For example, “It is becoming more difficult to get a mental health appointment. In 2015, 34.0 percent of Coloradans who didn’t get needed care said they had trouble getting an appointment, up from 30.5 percent in 2013 (Colorado Health Institute 2015)” Mental health problems were researched within our own school. A few years prior in 2019, before the intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic began, a student at Rock Canyon conducted an extensive survey analyzing mental health among students in Rock Canyon. The results of the study indicated that of 286 RCHS students. “The three top stressors students identified included academics (68.5%), college-related pressures (51.7%), and money (29.4%). Students who reported high levels of stress also reported symptoms of anxiety (62.1%), insomnia (58.2%), and bad mood swings (52.5%) occurring multiple times a week” (Titensor, 2020). In our own community, there was a high level of stress, anxiety, and other mental disorders before the pandemic. The goal of this paper is to better understand how these stressors and the mental health of high school students potentially may have changed after the pandemic. The information collected from the literature review can not only be used to provide RCHS staff with data about stressors among students but also within the district and other schools within the state when evaluating equity and mental health among high school students.
Social Media and Mental Health
Social media has greatly impacted mental health and how it is talked about. In adolescents, the young mind is very malleable, and social media is a large region behind its shift. There was a heightened use of social media during the pandemic, and that still carries on. Displaying this, 37.1% of U.S. high school students reported poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic (Anderson 2021). In the research conducted through the previous Rock Canyon survey, participants noted their struggles with social media feeling all-consuming. This data was taken pre-pandemic, and if trends follow, the data post-pandemic should mark an increase in this feeling. However, while historically social media has been deemed a negative influence on mental health, it can actually add unforeseen benefits. Some forms of social media may positively impact mental health, such as memes. Humorous memes play a role in coping mechanisms and cognitive reappraisal (Rahman 2021). The humor of the meme must be intertwined with the ability to make individuals feel both included and understood in order to have a positive benefit. Memes help users voice their opinions and feel heard.
Communication on Mental Health:
There is no doubt that the pandemic has created a vast divide in how we interact with others. While some students indicate that they feel more comfortable interacting with others online, most students indicate that the pandemic has made them suffer severely from the social restrictions (Holm-Hadulla 2021). Another issue greatly affecting mental health is the way that it is discussed. It is a taboo topic and thus changes the conversation and the conversation rate. This has led to an idea that mental health has no roots, and appears out of seemingly nothing. “Drug and alcohol abuse in the home, neglect, physical and verbal abuse, sexual abuse, poverty, job loss ... These are just some of the precipitating factors, which combine to lead to homelessness, as well as the mental health crises that often accompany it. In almost all cases, poor mental health doesn't "just happen” (Toronto Star Digital 2023). The lack of conversation around the topics that create these mental health issues has led the youth to feel unseen and therefore alone. “How mental health issues are diagnosed, managed and treated, and how the community responds to mental health conditions, are highly complex concerns” (Age 2019). Increasing the conversation around these difficult subjects will increase feelings of support, and decrease the negative emotions that students inhabit due to isolation.
Conclusion:
The effect of COVID-19 on the Mental Health of students is an extremely nuanced issue that is still being studied by social scientists today. The pandemic effectively changed social communication. The heavy reliance on technology and social media for communication impacted the mental health of students. Preliminary research has shown that the heavy reliance on technology had mainly negative effects on students by creating a device that teenagers are quick to become addicted to, however, social media may encourage creative and individualist expression with platforms to show humor and create art in a more accessible manner during a national lockdown. This heavy reliance and extended relationship between social media and students over the several months of lockdown has made students more vulnerable to the threats and addictive nature of social media. More research is needed to determine the lasting effects of the pandemic on the mental health of students. For now, increasing conversation about the isolation and addiction to technology students felt during the pandemic is vital to continue learning more about the effects of the pandemic, and creating resources to help students navigate the post-pandemic world.
Sources
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"Better mental health supports needed for our youth." Toronto Star Digital, 6 Feb. 2023, p. NA. Gale In Context: Global Issues, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A737143821/GIC?u=cast18629&sid=bookmark-GIC&xid=71b09c08. Accessed 21 July 2023.
Holm-Hadulla, Rainer M., et al. “Well-Being and Mental Health of Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Psychopathology, vol. 54, no. 6, Nov. 2021, pp. 291–97. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1159/000519366.
Mental Health in Colorado, Colorado Health Institute, 2015. https://www.coloradohealthinstitute.org/sites/default/files/file_attachments/Mental%20Health%20in%20Colorado%202%20pager2_0.pdf
"Much more to do on youth mental health." Age [Melbourne, Australia], 12 Aug. 2019, p. 16. Gale In Context: Global Issues, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A596143678/GIC?u=cast18629&sid=bookmark-GIC&xid=3ac97e3f. Accessed 21 July 2023.
Rahman, Nurzahan. “Contagious Memes in an Anxiety-Evoking Era.” Michigan Academician, vol. 48, no. 1, July 2021, pp. 81–82. EBSCOhost,
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