The past few years have gotten us used to bad news from the Centers for Disease Control, and this week was more of the same, yet this time it had nothing to do with COVID. The agency’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that about one in three high-school age girls had seriously considered suicide, and detailed sharp upticks in sexual violence and overall mental health struggles.
The CDC report makes explicit what many know intuitively, that schools are the first line of defense in nipping these crises in the bud, providing services and activities not just related to mental health but to belonging, with students feeling like they can build community and have someone to go to if they’re feeling unmoored or victimized.
Unfortunately, things seem to be trending in the wrong direction, with teachers around the country leaving their jobs en masse after feeling unsupported at best and under siege at worst. Classrooms have always been political battlegrounds to some extent, but the fights have reached fever pitch as political opportunists ban books while ironically accusing others of censorship or go to great lengths to make LGBTQ students — some of the most vulnerable to mental health struggles and harassment — feel unwelcome.
As the schools retreat, the problems get worse, culminating in issues like despair and violence. With youth violence rising, NYC school officials announced this week that school principals would begin having weekly meetings with local NYPD precinct commanders in an effort to raise issues before violence occurs. That we have to be intervening at the stage where violence is already manifesting is a collective failure to do right by our students.
There are many daunting issues facing our future, from climate change to growing authoritarianism in democratic societies. We are counting on our younger generations to step up and help guide us through, but that can’t happen if huge percentages of girls and teenagers are starting off already disillusioned and hopeless. If we don’t fix that, we don’t fix anything.
