I bet it is so amazing being you. Organized life, fun relationships, happy all the time, never stressed. Perfect. I wish everyone in the world could be like you. But sadly, it just doesn’t work that way. Imagine you were stressed all the time, had depression, were having a hard time with life, crying all the time. Mental issues. That’s how it feels. Really, I am not joking just a little bit. I definitely missed something, I am sure of it. But just thinking it can get worse than that, it’s scary.

I want you, perfect person, to be patient with others. You never know what they have gone through. If you just give them time, they will get it done. At their own pace. Mental health issues can stop you from doing a lot of stuff. Trust me, I know. Sometimes my mental health can be challenging. I cry over small things and big things all of the time. I will actually cry over homework if I don’t know how to do it or when to get it done. Just sitting in my bed at night, everything bad going on twirls through my head making me cry sometimes. It might sound bad, but those are some things I will share. My problems may seem bad to you, but there are people out in the world who have it way worse than me: depression, suicide, self-harm.

On Gale an article called “Mental Health Often Overlooked” said something crazy. 450 million people around the world have had a neurological mental disorder.  When I first saw this, I was sad that 450 people had this problem until I read it over one more time and realized it did not stay “hundred” after 450. It said 450 million. Are you joking? No. Is this information correct? Sadly, yes. In addition, 25% of the population can expect 1 or more mental issues in their life. So that means that a lot of people will be having a hard time during a part of their life. This is not good!

On Gale I also found another article called “Mental Health.” I found that a third of U.S. adolescents (ages 12-17) had received mental health treatment and had a major depressive episode that year. First of all, there are a lot of people getting treatment and not just people. Children! It’s almost hard to believe. And the same people had bad depression experiences that same year!

But is there a way to prevent this?  There are plenty of things you can do including therapy. Not everybody wants to talk to someone. So if everyone could just not feel pressure to do things and make short deadlines, that would be amazing. The saying: “Treat others how you want to be treated” would make a difference if we start today.

So next time you are hard on someone, think.

A Concerned Student
VUMS Student

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Students at Vergennes Union Middle School finished a civics unit by writing open letters. The driving question was: What makes democracy work? To create this final project, teachers and students used the New York Times open letter contest framework. Students could choose any topic they felt passionate about. The letters are being published in several different venues: in our school newsletter, on Front Porch Forum, in The Addison Independent, and on school bulletin boards. Two students submitted their letters to the NYT contest! Our students did a wonderful job writing these letters, and we hope you enjoy reading the ones that appear here. We expect these students will continue to use their voices to highlight issues they care about!

Libby Payeur and Nan Guilmette
VUMS Humanities Teachers