Leading up to last year’s winter finals, MVHS students flocked to the Wellness Room for its most popular stress reliever yet: hot chocolate. Throughout tutorial and brunch, Wellness Space Support Specialist Doreen Bonde was constantly restocking hot chocolate packets and boiling water in the kettle — even so, students were lined up.
Yet this was an anomaly for the Wellness Room, which receives an average of only 100 visits per semester — or one to two students per day — during class time. Though students who visit the space both during and outside of class time do report an average increase of two points on a 1-10 mood scale between coming in and leaving, the vast majority of visits remain during brunch, lunch and tutorial, when students can more easily come with friends and place academics on the back burner.
This skewed student engagement with the Wellness Room points to a larger culture at MVHS — we do not always take our resources, particularly those for mental health, seriously. In the California Healthy Kids Survey for the 2023-2024 school year, the most frequent barrier that FUHSD students reported facing in seeking mental health counseling was that they simply do not want to speak with a counselor or therapist. Since students ranked this aversion above even social stigma and fears of their parents and friends finding out that they were seeking help, it indicates that FUHSD students simply do not prioritize wellness on the same level that our administrators do.
In fact, a survey of 136 MVHS students found that 29% rank wellness as the least important at school when compared to grades, community and learning. Despite improvements in recent years, our academic culture continues to prioritize grades over well-being. It’s no surprise that students also neglect to take advantage of available opportunities, from the Wellness Room to school counselors and therapists. CHKS data indicates that only 26% of students say they would talk to a counselor or therapist if they felt sad, stressed, lonely or depressed — more tend to consult friends or family. While these other support systems are both helpful and crucial, they may not have the skills or resources to help with more complex situations. With 28% of FUHSD juniors reporting that they felt depressed — described in the survey and by the CDC as feeling sad or hopeless for weeks on end — during the 2023 to 2024 school year, it’s worrisome that most students don’t even consider speaking with a counselor a viable option.
Yet even as FUHSD students choose not to engage with wellness resources, this doesn’t mean FUHSD students don’t recognize administrative efforts to support students’ mental health — as of 2024, over 80% of CHKS survey respondents in FUHSD agreed that their schools encourage students to take care of their mental health, and over 55% across grade levels in FUHSD believe their schools talk openly about mental health. As California considers a state bill to provide students with mental health education in response to rising rates of mental health crises among youth, FUHSD advisories already target this need with topics such as stress management, self-care and how to reach out for mental health help.
Therefore, the gap between the resources available and students taking advantage of them is less about whether we recognize that these resources exist than it is about our recognition of both our needs and our privileges. In recent months, schools across the United States, particularly in rural areas, have pulled back on mental health support due to funding cuts from the Trump administration, scaling back programs to train and hire mental health providers in schools. FUHSD students are incredibly privileged to be able to rely on steady support from school counselors, therapists and psychologists, not to mention MVHS prioritizing student wellness in its WASC goals and through the Social Emotional Learning & Equity Coalition.
It’s no secret that many students view MVHS’ academic culture as toxic, but changing this culture requires individual students to recover from the toxicity one step at a time, the very function these wellness initiatives are supposed to serve. An abundance of resources serves little purpose if students are unwilling to engage with them — consequently, it is unfair of us to expect more from administrators when we fail to match it. We as students must share the responsibility of creating a supportive and healthy community. Only then will the effort on both sides truly be worth it.
