Commentary: Mental health resources are vital for students

By Alessandra Pimentel, Paloma Valley High student journalist

As teenagers evolve and learn how to be adults in this stage of life, they experience a variety of new emotions that can be difficult to deal with. Especially throughout high school, it can be challenging to juggle school and personal life. This can vary for every individual, but life happens, and certain emotions are inevitable.

Even now, many youth still face depressive thoughts. The 2023 Mental Health America census states that 16.9 percent of youth in the U.S. faced an episode like this in their life. Currently, in 2024, 56 percent of teens who suffer from depressive episodes are not receiving mental health services that could assist in treating them.

While it is important to prioritize academics, students battling with their emotions during class time find it too distracting to focus on academics when they are drowned in unknown emotions. This is especially true for teenagers who are newly introduced to the world of mental health and begin to find it difficult to address new emotions because they have no experience with them.

Society has begun to introduce available services that could potentially be used to assist any youth who suffer from mental health. At Paloma Valley High School, The Wellness Center was introduced in 2021, post-pandemic, as a tool to help students cope with any unwanted thoughts with a licensed professional. However, these services have been abused by many students who do not need the Wellness Center's assistance but instead use it as a form of leisure time to skip out on class time.

As a result, Paloma Valley has had to place a policy that only allows visits before/after school, during lunch, and exclusively in-class time for students who are experiencing a mental health crisis. Many students can misinterpret this as the school sends conflicting messages that prioritize mental health but limit the availability of the resources given to students.

Paloma Valley student Dangkhoa Dao, said, “It defeats the purpose of the Wellness Center. It forces people to compartmentalize their feelings.”

However, this has only been emphasizing the proper use of mental health resources as they provide a service to those who truly need it. While not all youth may be faced with mental health issues, it becomes crucial that they understand the significance of it. Countless adolescents have had to endure unhealthy thoughts and emotions that interfere with their chances of building healthy relationships with others and themselves. It becomes critical that society identifies this issue and takes action to reduce it.

The growth of mental health awareness has not only been addressed by schools but also by the City of Menifee. As the city continues to grow, we see new resources such as the You Matter organization, which is dedicated to improving mental health awareness and building individual empowerment for anyone in the community.

While a policy may seem to limit resources, it has been creating more exclusive resources for students who truly need help. Mental health is a significant factor in having a healthy lifestyle and without proper guidance, students may be caught up in a harmful mindset that blocks them from achieving a happy life and mental state.

It is important to acknowledge that resources like the Wellness Center are not intended to be taken for granted, because there are teenagers who may require help as it becomes a place to talk and relieve their disruptive thoughts. Teenagers are the future ,and society will have to learn how to properly address mental health to build a stronger and healthier community.