Dear Next President,

There is a huge issue that needs to be addressed involving student’s health all around the world. There needs to be more helping kids with mental health issues instead of just telling them “it happens”. Schools in the U.S. need to educate teachers and authoritative figures about understanding kids mental illnesses and be able to help them through it, not yell at the student for not completing work due to their illness. Schools are ignoring mental illnesses, and teachers should know how to understand them so they can help the students with them.

Secondly, the fact that mental illnesses are being ignored in schools obviously makes me extremely angry, as I believe it should with anybody. Jane Costello from Science Daily says “It's still the case in this country that people don't take psychiatric conditions as seriously as they should, this, despite the fact that these conditions are linked to a whole host of other problems.”, which is basically saying if we don’t ignore physical illnesses, why are we ignoring mental illnesses?

I believe that students all across the country would be very thankful that the teachers finally understand the stress that they’re adding to, since according to Sharon Jayson on USA Today “59% [of students] report that managing their time to balance all activities is a somewhat or very significant stressor” and “More than a quarter (27%) say they experience "extreme stress" during the school year”. I hope you take up my idea and help out all students of America.

So, what I would like you to do as President of the United States is to make a law to require teachers (and all authoritative figures at schools) to take a course on teen mental health to help them understand what we’re going through and how they can help.

Sincerely,

Ella

Grade 10

Mendota Heights, MN