Have you ever experienced anxiety when presenting for a class, or when a teacher calls on you to answer a question? Should that be taken more seriously? Let’s talk about it!

Recently, there have been trending tweets and protests about the in-school presentation, one of the top tweets coming from a 15-year-old high-school student “Stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give them a choice not to” she demands. That tweet gained more than 130,000 retweets and attracted an exceedingly large amount of attention. Another young student, a 14-year-old girl named Ula came out and said, “Nobody should be forced to do something that makes them uncomfortable,”

and many others have agreed, while many other adults have responded to this as though it were unnecessary and insignificant, why should mental health be involved in learning? Mental health affects everybody and can impact the way someone learns or handles their responsibilities. It could rob individuals of their motivation and inspiration, which could cause them to then fall behind and either be fired from their jobs or be unable to catch up on their school responsibilities. 

Mental health can affect our sleeping patterns, and there’s not exactly a cure for mental health, they make medications, however, medications don’t make the problem disappear, it only makes it bearable. Schools and workplaces not considering these factors also play a large role in mental health, perhaps instead of brushing off a student’s or employee’s mental health, supervisors should do a better job at helping fix the issue. Statistics from 2020 show that 40% of adults suffer from mental health, 1 in 6 Americans suffer from depression alone. 

In conclusion, the nation needs to do better at accepting mental health and understanding the oppression of it. It would be easier for everyone to come together and decide to stop ignoring the problem.