Social Issue Sermon: Student/Teenage Anxiety

Social Issue Sermon: Student/Teenage Anxiety

There is a line between the basic stresses of school and life, and anxiety. Anxiety affects more people than it may seem apparent, especially teenagers of middle to high school age. Anxiety in these cases are usually general or social. Anxiety can cause students to become easily overwhelmed with work when given to them in large amounts or without specific instruction. Often, students with anxiety find it difficult just to make it to school and are often absent, which leads to more anxiety over what they missed or what other students may think of them being absent so often. Children with anxiety that revolves around school are often switched to homeschool programs. Unfortunately, not all students are able to have this luxury, and must attempt to endure and push through their anxiety to do well in school. They have a more difficult time than the average student. Students with more visible or “serious” medical conditions are often accommodated in order to make their learning experience more organized or flexible. Anxiety is caused by chemical imbalance in the brain, therefore, making it a proper medical issue. Why then, are there not strides taken in order to help students who are suffering from anxiety?

Imagine, you go to bed at a reasonable time. You toss and turn for maybe an hour or so, unable to sleep because your mind is racing. When you close your eyes, you see nothing but what you have to do tomorrow, the next day, the next day, the next day and it puts your stomach in knots. It’s like a circus is happening in your mind and you can’t shut it off. But eventually, you fall asleep. And you suddenly wake, maybe even without dreaming, to find that you are just as tired as you were before you went to bed. You drag yourself to the bathroom and you begin to think of the day ahead of you, first period, second period, third period. You have so many projects to begin, people you are going to have to deal with, teachers who make you feel stupid. You don’t want to go, you can’t, you just CAN’T go. You get sick to your stomach and you hunch over the sink, your knees buckle, and soon you’ve been on the bathroom floor for twenty minutes doing nothing but psyching yourself out about the day you have ahead of you and how difficult it will be to get through. Eventually you throw on some clothes and just go to school. But as the day goes on, you get more and more tired, because your sleep was in no way restful; because, even when you fell asleep, your mind never actually calmed down. Every muscle in your body threatens to give in as you drag yourself from class to class. You can’t work with your group because you can’t focus and you don’t have the mental strength to deal with interaction, you just want to get home. You’re a zombie. Every day this happens, every single day. Eventually you get to the point where you can’t handle it, the work is too much, you begin to shut down, but your anxiety still keeps you up at night. You get more and more sick in the mornings to the point where you can’t get out of bed. You ARE sick, this isn’t something you chose to do. Even the kids who HATE school manage to get here and make good grades. You don’t mind school, you liked it when you were younger. What changed?

Students with anxiety need to be accommodated. Anxiety is seen as just another type of stress or motivator, when in reality, it can be a crippling inhibitor to success.There need to be exceptions made for these students in the way of work, groups versus individual assignments and tutoring. School systems need to have ways for students to retrieve a full lesson should they have to miss in-school days, with just as much credit as being at school instead of being penalized for having a medical condition. Students should NOT be forced out of schools in response to having anxiety. Students who are shown flexibility are often more successful because they feel less pressure which allows them less room for more anxiety and they can focus better. In a study of 201 adult patients who deal with anxiety, only 25.9% made it past grade 12. More than 22% of these patients said they felt too nervous in school, other problems included intimidation by teachers and public speaking. Without help and flexibility, so many will lose the opportunity to be properly educated. Without help, and the rising numbers in teen anxiety, bright minds and the future will be wasted. So, if not the school system, just one teacher could make a student’s anxiety easier to cope with in school, by having and understanding spirit. If this issue is not taken to quickly, we will begin to lose generations and generations of intelligence to the effects anxiety.