Daily Herald opinion: Students' discussion emphasizes key points about fighting mental illness

This editorial represents the consensus opinion of The Daily Herald Editorial Board.

It feels awkward to invoke the word “courageous” to describe high school students who participated Monday in a discussion on youth mental health, but the conversation during an event at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville involving the U.S. Surgeon General could not have been easy.

One Neuqua Valley senior was himself the survivor of two suicide attempts. Another spoke of the tendencies for students to avoid talking about what goes on behind the image of high standards they are expected to represent at the school. Another noted how isolated students can feel from each other.

And the very discussion itself took place amid a backdrop of tragedy. In recent months, two Neuqua Valley students have died by suicide.

Indeed, across the country, repeated studies are finding the pandemic has seriously exacerbated already profound stresses on teenage mental health.

Just this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported findings from a study in the first half or 2021 showing that more than a third of students experienced poor mental health, a little under half — 44% — “experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness,” nearly one in five seriously considered suicide and almost one in 10 — 9% — attempted suicide in the 12 months prior to the survey.

And an overriding theme of the CDC report, as for so many others on the topic of teenage and even adult mental health, was the importance of building social connections and being able to talk about issues and personal concerns.

Neuqua Valley junior Andrew Fargo put it this way on Monday: “In a lot of instances, people who struggle with these mental illnesses and have mental health problems aren't really able to speak for themselves and aren't really able to advocate for themselves because we're so isolated from one another.”

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, a featured speaker via Zoom for the program, emphasized that many options are available to help people who are struggling, but the key is making people aware of them and then encouraging them to take advantage of them.

That latter notion also has important implications for society as a whole and for people of all ages; for one of the greatest obstacles people struggling with mental health issues face is the stigma that remains attached to the disease.

Dispelling that stigma needs to be an objective for all of us, regardless of the state of our mental health at any given moment. Pandemic or no pandemic, we will begin to really help each other — and especially our young people — deal with the mental health struggles life imposes only when no one has to summon courage to talk about them.