By Anish Sikhinam – Staff Reporter

Jake is a high school junior in North Carolina who takes three Advanced Placement courses, runs cross country for his school, and has attended multiple Model U.N. conferences. Although Jake worked hard, failure at anything always scared him. Jake believed he couldn’t keep up with his peers, or that he won’t succeed in life.

All of a sudden, Jake had a massive stress breakdown, and he felt that going to school was impossible. Jake was prescribed Prozac, an antidepressant given to depressed and anxious teenagers by his physician. The drug, which was one of many Jake would soon be prescribed, did not work, and seemed to make an already tough situation even worse.

A few weeks later, Jake locked and tried to drown himself in the bathroom. After being hospitalized for four days, Jake started hiding out in his room, and argued with his parents about going to school, making him feel more anxious and depressed. He even began to threaten suicide again.

After two more hospitalizations, Jake’s parents have sent him to a residential facility in New Hampshire that has programs geared towards stressed and anxious teenagers like Jake.

Jake is one of the many high school and college teenagers and students that suffer from anxiety from school, which has recently overtaken depression as the reason that many students seek out guidance and help. High school teenagers have many activities, and responsibilities to keep up with in their lives – doing good in AP classes, as well as in honors classes, playing one or more sports, playing instruments, joining and participating in clubs, doing community service, and much more. In addition to this, many students feel that if they don’t succeed at any of these, they won’t succeed in their career or their life.

Students also have a lot going on in terms of social life, due to the smartphone bringing social media apps like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat to prominence. Teenage students usually spend a lot of time on these websites, and some often lose sleep over keeping up with all of these things, and they often have little to no free time to get rest or spend valuable time with their family.

There have been an overwhelming amount of studies done on this topic, and many statistics have been found supporting the increasing amounts of student burnout, exhaust, and stress, especially in a time of smartphones and fast internet and social media. According to the American College Health Association, there has been a significant increase in stress over the past few years – from 50 percent in 2011 to 62 percent in 2016.

“Anxiety is the most common mental-health disorder in the United States, affecting nearly one-third of both adolescents and adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health,” New York Times journalist Benoit Denizet-Lewis said. “But unlike depression, with which it routinely occurs, anxiety is often seen as a less serious problem.”

Forms of severe stress and anxiety similar to what Jake and many other high school students experience is often overlooked. This is because everyone has stress and anxiety to a level – it was an evolutionary feature that helped early ancestors escape threats and dangerous situations by triggering a “fight or flight” response.

“Highly anxious people, though, have an overactive fight-or-flight response that perceives threats where there often are none,” Denizet-Lewis said.

According to Suniya Luthar, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University studying stress in all students, the privileged students are often more stressed.

“These kids are incredibly anxious and perfectionistic,” Luthar said. For many students, they can “never get to the point where they can say, ‘I’ve done enough, and now I can stop.’” Her research shows that “kids have a sense that they’re not measuring up” and that “the pressure is relentless and getting worse”.

The increase in competitiveness in schools can also pressure students, causing stress.

“School is putting so much pressure on them with the competitiveness … I’ve seen eighth graders admitted as inpatients, saying they have to choose a career,” said Marco Grados, an associate professor of psychiatry and clinical director of child and adolescent psychiatry at John Hopkins Hospital.

In addition to stress from school, social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat can increase the anxiety levels that a student experiences everyday. Due to the rise in prominence of smartphones and social media networking sites over the last decade, this is something that many parents of students cannot relate to. This current generation is the first to experiment with social media and actually see its effects on human behavior, especially with regards to stress and anxiety. Indeed, “when it comes to treating anxiety in children and teens, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are the bane of therapists’ work,” Washington Post journalist Amy Ellis Nutt writes.

Grados notes that “with (social media), it’s all about the self-image – who’s ‘liking’ them, who’s watching them, who clicked on their picture. Everything can turn into something negative… [K]ids are exposed to that day after day, and it’s not good for them.”

And the numbers really do add up. A UCLA study done by the Higher Education Research Institute asked incoming college freshmen if they “felt overwhelmed” by their experience going forward. According to the study, 18 percent said yes in 1985. By 2000, that number had climbed to 28 percent, and by 2016, this number had climbed to 41 percent. Jean Twenge, psychology professor at San Diego State University, looked at Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) results. The MMPI is one of the oldest surveys assessing human psychology and psychopathology, and it is still in use today, dating back to the era of the Great Depression. After looking at the responses of more than 77,500 high school and college students over the decades, she concluded that five times as many students in 2007 “surpassed thresholds” in more than one mental health category, and anxiety and depression were six times more common since 1938.

This anxiety problem also seems to be affecting some more than others. According to the National Survey of Children’s Health, among the parents who responded “yes” to if their child had feelings of anxiety or depression, 10.7 percent of parents reported that their child’s depression was severe. Furthermore, 15.2 percent reported that their child’s anxiety was severe. The survey also found that anxiety and depression were more common amongst white and non-Hispanic people. Another study done by the National Institutes of Health describes the incidence of stress among girls as 38.0 percent – far above the incidence of stress among boys, which was 26.1 percent.

Moreover, clinicians have stated that anxiety in teenagers can lead to many other health problems down the road. In the National Survey of Children’s Health, it was found that children with anxiety or depression were more likely obese compared to their peers.

“I have a wide range [of patients], take all insurances, do inpatients, day hospital, outpatients, and see anxiety across all strata,” Grados said. He regularly treats patients with anxiety and sees them as part of his clinical practice.

“Anxiety can be an early stage of other conditions,” Grados said. “Bipolar, schizophrenia later in life can initially manifest as anxiety.”

However, there is hope for those with stress and anxiety. Mountain Valley is a non-profit “residential treatment facility and one of a growing number of programs for acutely anxious teenagers,” Denizet-Lewis said. These facilities are usually a last resort – after conventional therapy – however, more and more students arrive at them each year due to the increase in anxiety.

“The young people I met there suffered from a range of anxiety disorders, including social anxiety, separation anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder,” Denizet-Lewis reports after visiting Mountain Valley.

After going to Mountain Valley for three months, Jake had improved significantly and was in much better shape compared to his past self and other newcomers there. During Jake’s time at anxious facilities like Mountain Valley, he had learned to analyze and cope with his thoughts of being unsuccessful and a total failure.

“I’m free to play the part of terrible, evil thoughts for anyone who needs them,” Jake said. Teens also learn to voice their insecurities that cause them to feel stressed and talk about it amongst others. By talking about it amongst each other, these problems seem more relatable to teenagers, and they don’t have the feeling that “they’re the only one.”

Jake had also learned mindfulness techniques, and had participated in art, equine, and most importantly, exposure therapy. Exposure therapy exposes teenagers like Jake to their fears – in this case, their thoughts of being unsuccessful – incrementally, allowing them to familiarize themselves with the cause of their anxiety. Therapists at Mountain Valley had devised exercises tailored to specific fears that students like Jake had. Since Jake’s main fear was failure, he learned ways to cope with imperfection and ways to de-stress when he seemed anxious.

After leaving Mountain Valley, Jake eventually got into his dream school – University of North Carolina. However, the change that Jake experienced during his time at the treatment facility was invaluable. As of now, Jake says that if he hadn’t gotten into UNC, that he would have been disappointed, but he really would have been fine. According to him, ¨there are other schools in the world where I would have been happy. I definitely wouldn’t have believed that a couple years ago, but a lot’s changed.”

(Some information courtesy nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com)