BREAKING THE STIGMA
High school students, from left, Astrid Krueger, Zachary Flynn and Farzeen Ather were part of a full-day mental health conference for students Monday called Stepping Forward Together at Strathcona High School.
Edmonton students say resources are in place, but more work needs to be done to address mentalhealth issues in high schools.
Edmonton public schools’ student senate held its second Stepping Forward Together mental health conference Monday, bringing together students from across the district in Grade 9 and up.
The three student trustees — Astrid Krueger, Farzeen Ather and Zachary Flynn, who represent the senate to the board of trustees throughout the year — all said their schools have fantastic resources, but to utilize them fully, the conversation around mental health needs to be de-stigmatized.
“Starting these conversations at the conference kind of gives students the courage to go back to their peers and have those same conversations,” said Flynn, a Grade 12 student at Eastglen High School.
One exercise the students took part in was passing a ball around with questions such as ‘ Who’s your role model?’ or ‘ What do you do to relax?’ written on it. They had to answer the question upon catching the ball.
Flynn said he hopes exercises like this will normalize conversations about feelings between peers.
Krueger, a Grade 12 student at McNally High School, said it’s also important that students are educated on the difference between mental health and mental illness — mental health is an individual’s everyday mental well-being, and mental illness is a clinical diagnosis.
“I know a lot of people who talk about having those things, but don’t really understand what it means,” said Krueger.
“It’s almost like it’s trendy to have depression. It’s kind of been romanticized and it takes away from the people who really are suffering from those things,” she said.
All three students said stress and test anxiety are big, but unique to their generation is the added pressure of their online image.
“I think less often now we’re able to see who people really are, rather than what they feel everyone else expects from them,” said Krueger.
She also said students her age constantly hear that “all these jobs are going to disappear,” and it has caused a lot of uncertainty and anxiety around the future.
Luckily, more help may be on its way after Edmonton public school trustees voted to request more mental-health support from the province last Tuesday.
For now, the student senate will continue to run events like its conference to make students more comfortable around mentalhealth issues and educate them on mental health.