With midterms recently concluded, SAT’s being scheduled, and AP tests drawing nearer, students are under a severe amount of stress. But how severe?
Recent studies are answering this question, and let’s just say the results are not positive.
Taking a look at a meta-analytic study by the APA, stress level data was collected from thousands of children and young adults. These levels have been steadily rising since the 1950’s, to the point where 1980’s students were reporting higher stress levels than that of child psychiatric patients in the 1950’s. These findings appeared in American Psychological Association’s (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Students were found with higher levels of anxiety than a psychiatric patient. To understand the weight of that statement, one would have to understand the environment in which a psychiatric patient lived.
Mental institutions have changed dramatically over time, adopting new methods of treatments and understanding of medical conditions. In the 1950’s these treatment facilities were very populated, as even the slightest symptoms of depression could lead to admission. These mental institutions were established as holding places for the “dangerous” and “disruptive” members of society.
The hospitals became popular by deceiving society that they were friendly institutions, with the right treatments to cure the disorders. Paranoid Americans were always wary of mental disorders, which were historically believed to be demonic traits, so they were never slow to admit a patient.
Living conditions often consisted of a cell and chains with little sanitation. Common treatments were not optional for the patients, and included ice baths, blood letting, and tranquilizer chairs.
Many patients, who were deemed to have more “dangerous” conditions, lived in straitjackets and had to be fed by the other patients. Others were confined to the blank hallways of the asylum, and often led to daily “shock” treatment.
The wealthy would sometimes pay to tour these institutions to observe the patients and the treatments.
One of the most popular surgical treatments during the time, but very rare today, was a lobotomy, which is the removal of the frontal lobe of the brain. This is where things such as your personality and attitude are controlled. However, this treatment was not always necessary, useful, or relevant, based on our knowledge of mental disorders today. These surgeries often left patients “blank” or without personality.
In the late 1950’s there were shifts in how mental health and its treatments were viewed. Around 1957, the populations in these asylums began to slowly drop as new ideas of these mental disorders developed. The effects of these new outlooks were slow to take place, and new treatments consisted of only medicines, which one could imagine were hard to come by.
Despite this, it is clear that patients in these asylums went through quite literal tortured in order to be accepted by society, sometimes without consent.
The study shows that depression and anxiety rates for high schoolers will only continue to increase. For teenagers today, the leading cause of death is suicide. The leading cause of death for teenagers in the 1950’s was unintentional accidents, and in the 1980’s suicide was ranked the third leading cause of death for students.
Does this mean high school is torture? That would be a stretch; however, what does that make high school and the lives of these students? This may be something for both students and teachers to think about.
