Multiple people all over the world have mental health issues and schools often try to help but they don’t do enough.

Friends and classmates have been more helpful than staff members of the schools. High school staff members often invalidate students without knowing and don’t give adequate support for mental health. As well, some school counsellors will tell you to get a therapist instead of helping you themselves, they'll give you phone numbers to call. What a lot of them don’t realize is often the person calling a crisis line will have to wait longer than forty minutes to be connected to someone on the line because crisis phone numbers are very understaffed, and the person their connected with normally won't be very helpful once they know it's a teenager because they'll often think teenagers say things that they won't do. Then, the person who called the number feels unimportant, like a waste of space and it might already be too late to help the person. As well, a ton of students can’t afford therapy; not because they’re family is struggling with money but because therapy is quite expensive. All struggling students want is for the schools to understand them and be a little more kind and helpful. Not just the kids support but the staff members as well. High school counsellors need to be more educated on helping those with mental illnesses as it is a severe issue in multiple high schools in Canada, along with teachers. Teenagers attempting suicide because of mental illnesses stemming from schools pressuring is quite real, and I've found that students take this more seriously than most adults in education do.

The government of Canada doesn’t give enough funding or attention to mental health in high schools and ministry of education needs to change their system so that students feel supported. There might be learning centers for student who want to go part-time online and part-time at school, but it is a very stigmatized option that not a lot of people talk about. I've even heard school counsellors talk badly about learning centers. Maybe the ministry of education needs to add a mandatory class on mental health for both teachers and students, or the government needs to fund more part-time high-school students. Or they can allow students to take multiple online classes while attending in-person school with only two classes in-person. I'm not sure what solution to pick, but there are multiple solutions and one have them has to work. Students want to see the government trying new things until one works, because that means they’re trying and they care. Currently, it seems to me like they don’t.

I've experienced the negatives of high school both first and second-handed. People have taken their lives, started self-harm and engaged in risky behaviours majorly due to the pressure school puts on a person’s mental well-being - both academic and people-pressure. Even though schools can be one of the most invalidating and harmful environments for students, students have to go to school up until sixteen in Canada and need parents permission to drop out or move schools until they person is nineteen years of age, which makes no sense as most students are done high school when they’re nineteen. A lot needs to change in the way schools run their mental health system as millions of people struggle with keeping stable mental health while dealing school grades and school pressure. 

Students are able to get IEPs and designations, however it's quite hard, a long process, and can be an extremely invalidating process. School and mental health need to have a balance, and students have done their part in trying to balance it out. Changes are long overdue, and it's time for the ministry to step up and do their part now.