“It makes me feel like sh*t.”
That’s how Maura Moloney, a sophomore at NWA, described her educational experience. Moloney’s ire was not directed at any school in particular, rather the painful reality of many schools across the country, sparking an important conversation about mental health days for students.
“It’s all day long and then hours every night,” she said. “School is never ending. Then you add in the pressure of grades and preparing for college.”
The pressure placed on students to balance their mental health with schoolwork, especially with the extra challenges of personal life, can be rewarding but also demanding and entirely unfair. Moloney pointed to overwhelming amounts of classwork, an anxiety-inducing culture of perfectionism and the stressful letter grade system as the root of the issue. According to her, the mental health of students is grossly undervalued, especially in more competitive spaces such as private schools.
“If you don’t do incredibly on the work, your grade goes down— now you have a bad grade— now more stress to get it up— but that means more work and time,” she said. “It just feels like sometimes your value as a person is dependent on your grade. Like you walk around with a letter over your head and if it’s not an A you’re stupid.”
The idea of a “mental health day” was first introduced to me by a friend who had recently lost a close loved one. I remember her saying it as a throwaway comment:
“I’m just kind of taking some mental health days right now; it’s been hard.”
Since then, the idea has stuck in the back of my mind, when finals week throws four essays at me or I have only a few hours after sports practice to get a project done. The intense stress of school would be easier to tackle with a fresh and well-rested brain. Many students at NWA agree.
“I feel like we just get crammed with work right before breaks and stuff,” said Lulu Tonisson, a sophomore at NWA. “It’s harder to get a full night of sleep with all of the work and then I’m super tired during the day.”
The idea of mental health days are not only supported by students, but by science as well. According to the National Institutes of Health, stress can have negative effects on cognitive function and inhibit the ability to learn properly. Chronic stress is stated to affect both the physical and mental health of students and hinder their overall performance in school.
According to a talkspace article that cites multiple studies, mental health days could help students in seven different ways, from giving them a break from pressure to promoting healthy work habits.
The reason for mental health days would be similar to that of paid time off, a set number of days for employees to not be at work, whether for sickness, vacation or mental health. It’s a system utilized across the country to make employees feel as comfortable and healthy as possible, and it logically follows that the same effects would be seen in students. Many students at NWA agree.
“Sometimes you just need a break from physically going to school,” said Addy Paternoster, an NWA sophomore. “So the option to take a mental health day will prevent students from working themselves into the ground.”
The idea of a student working themselves too hard is a frighteningly real possibility. Most teachers assign homework everyday, eradicating the purpose of a mental health day if you come back to extra work.
In order to combat burnout and properly accommodate all students, it’s imperative that schools recognize the stress they can bring, and form a plan. Here is a starting point: One day of no school is granted for every two months (minus breaks), meaning that each student will have five days in the year that they can miss as a mental health day.
The day would have to be declared in advance by at least 24 hours and any outstanding work for that day is to be rescheduled or cleared from the students schedule depending on a conversation with their teacher.
The reason for the 24 hour period is to maintain an open line of communication before a student takes a day off, to make sure that the student has a full understanding of what they would be missing (tests, due dates, school events etc…). This system would rely on student-teacher communication but would be far more effective than the current situation.
By adopting a system similar to this, NWA will adhere to its mission statement “to inspire students to cultivate their own intellectual and artistic voices in a supportive community grounded in knowledge, creativity, and critical thinking.” In the current system, students are left with unmanageable workloads instead of knowledge, burnout instead of creativity and a stifling environment instead of important critical thinking skills. The school must take action.
