Life's Effects on Teenagers' Mental Health

“With around one in four teenagers developing significant mental health problems, however, parents need to know what’s normal and when to worry-it’s part of the job” (Media Release). Teenagers deal with a lot of troubles that, for the most part, others do not see or even have knowledge what they are going through or what the issue is. Some teenagers go weeks or months without speaking or acknowledging anyone, but nobody notices until the teenagers tells someone. Most people believe that the teenager is just having a bad day, but is it really just a bad day when it is like that for weeks or months? There are so many ways that life effects a teenager’s mental health but I only choose three. School can affect a teenager’s health; parents can do the same also work. Work and school are two of the three that are most important.

High school has a huge effect on students and their mental health, the reasoning behind it could be the school not offering the correct help the students may very well need, the students refusing to seek professional help, or the student is feeling uncomfortable with seeking help from the proper people. Students who do not seek the correct amount of help or get the correct help in order to get better could/will lead to adulthood with more trouble. Not having the appropriate therapy could possibly cause more harm than good and that would be a serious problem. “Only one in 10 health authorities have policies in place for young people’s health and less than half (40%) have guidelines dealing with teenager’s mental health problems” (Health Service). Mental health is a subject that most people or students are not okay with talking about, most people are ignoring the fact that they have mental issues.

Teenagers deal with a huge amount of emotions and personal things that not everyone knows about. “We had no idea how depressed she was” (Dear Wendy). Parents don’t pay attention to their teens and the in a counter-reaction of their oblivious knowledge the teen sometimes reacts badly. Typically, teens will retaliate by doing everything their parents would rather them not do all for attention. Teenagers have emotions and deal with more than their parents did. Nowadays, unlike most teens, parents didn’t have jobs, school, college, all at the same time. At such an age it stresses the teens out way more than it did when the parents were the same age. Parents also compare how different their childhoods were and that makes their children feel worse about themselves because the parents put the children down. They don’t understand that their childhood is way different from ours.

“Less than one in five (18%) have adolescent mental health units to help teenagers cope with illnesses such as depression or eating disorders, the poll or more than 100 health authorities found” (Health Services). If parents can’t notice if or when their children are severely depressed, how do they expect the school systems to realize that the teenager is depressed? Schools puts a huge amount of stress on the students because school has lost its meaning. School is for learning but now with everyone putting emphasis on grades and how you need good grades in order to get into a good college. Far too many students are worried about getting good grades to get into a good college than actually learning the subject. The students think more about the grade on that math test that they took last week then about actually knowing and understanding the material.

The social pressure put on students as well at school has made the students think that everyone has to like them. They think that being liked by everyone else is more important than school or the work for school because they don’t want to be the odd ball out. Peer pressure is one of the major influences in school. Some teenagers to de-stress themselves have started hustling, by doing these kids have been revealed themselves to a whole new world of drugs, alcohol, and sex. The sad reality of teenagers is that they are more gullible than everyone else. They are more easily persuaded and easily tricked into doing a lot more than it would’ve been back when our parents were in high school.

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The teen-age years are the years that you will always remember. At this time, teens learn a lot of things, experience a lot of things and round themselves as adults. Teenagers use these years to experience life or basically experience everything that their parents do not want their teenagers doing yet such as drinking and partying. Most teens do everything their parents do not want them to do because it is exciting, to have the chance to do something in spite of your parents and that is very interesting to most teens. Parents obviously do not like the fact that their children are not doing everything that they say. Now the parents are stressed thinking that their teenagers are going to go down the wrong path, but the teenagers know that they are just trying to experience life before they grow up, become mature and be an adult. Whenever a teenager doesn’t experience some life while they are teenagers then that means that are more than likely going to experience it as adults. As a teenager, there is more freedom to try new things that are normally not good to do when a certain age has been reached. Doing something as a sixteen-year-old would typically be more acceptable than doing it as thirty-five-year-old adult. At sixteen you are still trying to experience life and you will more than likely just get a slap on the wrist but trying it as an adult then you know right from wrong and will probably not just get a slap on the wrist, you could end up in jail.

Experiencing things as an adult that could’ve been experience as a teen normally results in a bad habit that might turn into an addiction. “Many teens also report feeling overwhelmed (31%) and depressed or sad (30%) as a result of stress. More than one-third of teens report fatigue or feeling tired (36%) and nearly one-quarter of teens (23%) report skipping a meal due to stress” (American Psychological). Assuming that the teenagers who are stressed end up with a bad crowd, they cave into peer pressure, and assuming that they get some type of addiction either from the way they live their lives or an addiction from some kind of substance such as alcohol, or marijuana, or any hard-core drug.

Stress in teenagers can compete with their health and mental well-being. “The results of a study that tried to determine the association between overweight and obesity, demographic variables, elevated blood pressure, and frequency of health care referrals in rural adolescents” (Rollins Judy). Being under this great amount of stress at a young age could possibly compromise the enjoyment of being a teenager. To keep stress levels down it would help by having someone the teenager could rely on so they can discuss what is going on such as a friend, teacher or another adult. Teenagers, most of the time, need that outlet because it shortens their life span being stressed all the time. “Individuals living with serious mental illnesses die 25 years, on average, earlier than others” (Johnson). From knowing this, is it important that people are informed about mental health and how it is important that the teenagers get the help that they need because not everyone can deal with their problems all on their own.

Having someone that you can count on to not judge you or tell you that you’re dumb for thinking like that is an essential part for teens to have a de-stressing moment. When there is someone that you could resort to about your personal problems makes life a little bit easier to live. “It is alarming that the teen stress experience is so similar to that of adults. It is even more concerning that they seem to underestimate the potential impact that stress has on their physical and mental health” (American Psychological). One study from the American Psychological had shown that fifty-four percent of teens vs thirty-nine percent of adults have a physical effect from stress and fifty-two percent of teens vs forty-three percent of adults have a mental effect from stress. This possibly/ will cause harm to teens and adults.

There are plenty of ways to de-stress, you could meditate, it calms you and makes you think deeper with stressing so much. Working out could also be an amazing way to de-stress because you release neurotoxins that are good for your health. There are multiple ways to de-stress like preparing for the next day the night before, it is proven nothing is more stressful than being unprepared, says Mona Lisa Schulz, MD, PhD, author of ‘The New Feminine Brain’ (Free Press,2005). Going swimming will also allow the body to relax. “A new Swedish study published in the International Journal of Stress Management found that floating in water triggers the body’s relaxation response, helping lower stress-hormone levels. Even better, nearly 80 percent of the subjects showed improvements such as feeling less tense and depressed” (O’Connor). You could start playing tennis. “Tennis is a great way to blow off steam, because it’s an aerobic activity that manages the stress hormones while boosting feel-good endorphins” (Wall St. Cheat Sheet). Tennis can even help you manage your stress levels. A lot of sport and activities such as tennis are actually really good for not just your physical health but also your mental health. Boxing is also another good way to help relieve your stress. Beating up a bag and taking out your anger on it temporarily relieves your stress and leaves you feeling a whole lot better.

So, in conclusion to everything teenagers get stressed out a lot and because of life and life’s experience but there is always a healthy way of dealing with this stress instead of locking yourself in your room and being depressed. Go and talk to someone about it or even go play a game of tennis or do yoga. Maybe even go boxing. They are so many ways to deal with your stress. You shouldn’t have to bottled everything up and deal with it yourself. There are people there for you always. You just have to go and talk to them. They may or not understand what you are going through. If they don’t understand what you are going through then help them understand. Just ask for help. Do not go through everything on your own.