At San Luis Obispo High School, students are expected to get good grades, study, do Honors/AP classes, and sports in order to get into a college. Being at school causes anxiety, but with all the work, homework, tests, and expectations, education raises the anxiety levels even higher. Anxiety has been a common problem for many years but the rates are getting worse each year, and schools are a big part of teen stress.

  “Schools should be focusing on this problem right now because high school is a very stressful time for teenagers. Rates have been rising and it is very noticeable around the school, especially in the new freshman class,” said sophomore Jadyn Sennett.

  Nearly one in three of all adolescents ages 13-18 will experience some anxiety disorder and roughly 80 percent of teens with a diagnosable anxiety disorder don’t get any help. Schools should provide more awareness to this problem and possibly teach students more about mental health.

  “High schools can help the anxiety with students by giving them more resources if they need help, less to no homework, and not expect so much out of students,” said Junior Ali Parvizi.

  While the academic part of high school causes a lot of anxiety, it can also be the people at the school that are the cause. We live in a world of technology, and news around the school can be at any students hands in a minute.

  “We know of more problems going on because of social media, and our parents never had that as kids. So that does bring a lot of anxiety to realize what our world is becoming and the expectations we have to meet. It’s just too much, especially with toxic people at SLOHS,” said freshman London Eddings.

  Unfortunately, the anxiety rates are rising for teens and schools need to take action because this problem is becoming an epidemic amongst teens.

Source: healthychildren.org and sbtreatment.com