Mental Health is a problem that affects many high school students, and people in general. About 135 deaths, that’s one person every 11 minutes. That is how many people take their own life a day. Out of 135 people, 107 of those are men. Men can go through a lot of stress, family problems, childhood abuse, having a long-term physical condition, etc. What’s been through in life, can affect you every day. Many mental health victims start having the effects before the age of 14 and 75% before the age of 24. Some conditions can be passed down through genetics like bipolar.
Student athletes also deal with mental health, people think that it is just physical problems but when being a student athlete you have to balance school, sports, family, social life and possibly a job as well.
Daniel Shelton, a counselor at Rockbridge County, gave his thoughts on how student athletes can go through mental health problems, “ say they’re not like a three-sport athlete, so they’re not playing every season, they’ll sort of lose a sense of I don’t know if it’s identity or purpose or what, but we’ll see a little bit of a like decline in their mental health there, because like having the physical activity, having like a routine, something to look forward to that like gets you out of like a monotony is really helpful, and so when they’re not in season, we’ll see them kind of They kind of just like in a limbo and a like waiting period and that can start to cause some dips.” said Shelton.
Malik Corbin, a junior at Rockbridge, plays basketball and football and thinks RCHS does a good job with students’ mental health.
“Yes, they provide helpful sources and counseling for people who need it, and the teachers are helpful too,” Corbin said.
POL Scientific wrote an article about student athlete mental health, located a quote explaining the percentage of student athletes that experience stress dealing with sports and school.
“Approximately 91% of all the cohort experienced some level of stress due to sports. Interestingly, About 27% who were experiencing moderate to extreme stress wanted, but did not receive, help from a medical professional, only 18% believed that receiving help from a medical professional would not be beneficial for them.” https://doi.org/10.52965/001c.70167.
Mental Health can really affect your daily life, it can really affect how you think about stuff, anxiety, panic attacks, etc. That’s why it’s very important that we take men’s mental health serious because men are also more likely to die by suicide than women.
