The narrative that modern children’s declining mental health is mainly caused by today’s academic pressures doesn’t fully explain what teachers are seeing in the classroom. Like most of the girls in Dana’s class, a majority of the incidents involving suicide and depression were rooted more in social pressures, such as problems with friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, body image, and low self-esteem. For most of these students, their interest in education was very low. Looking at the bigger picture, when you consider that 64 percent of seventeen-year-olds are spending little to no time at
...more
