Caring for the Whole Pe
M
ental health has been the issue focus of the Youth Action Internship team over the last two academic years. Each year, the interns conduct a listening campaign with their peers to discern an issue to work on based on their lived experience and what they hear emerging from their peers. The struggle with mental health has been a central theme of each listening campaign. As a result of what the students witnessed last year, in May 2024 they submitted a proposal to the Archdiocese of Seattle Office for Catholic Schools on how to promote positive and flourishing mental health among Catholic high school students. What follows is an abridged excerpt from that report.
Student Experience Listening Campaign Findings: In October 2023, we began one-to-one listening campaign. Over six weeks, students hosted 48 one-to-one sessions. The two most prevalent issues discussed were: racism and ableism/ access to healthcare, specifically within the education system. • 33 percent of the one-to-one participants who were impacted by racism, ableism, or both expressed additional concerns about experiences of poor mental health or mental illness, stigma within their school or cultural context, and lack of access to mental health resources. • When surveyed, 100 percent of our cohort named mental health as a social justice issue that aligned with their values and/or experiences.
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“100 percent of our cohort named mental health as a social justice issue.” Due to the resonance of this issue with us, we determined our social justice movement would focus on mental health, specifically among Generation Z. This work built upon the work from 2022-2023 with three major recurring themes: 1. The prioritization of success, performance and college entrance over the health and well-being of students. 2. A lack of parental support in taking action to engage in positive preventative mental health practices and receiving mental health resources from school or outside sources. Students believe that parents carry stigma about mental health that makes it impossible for them to express their needs or concerns to their parents. 3. Lack of social emotional and coping skills among students. It was described that while social isolation was a main contributor to poor mental health, many students did not know how to engage in relationship dynamics that could dismantle this sense of isolation. We determined that building a mental health campaign to address feelings of isolation, parental mental health education, and teaching positive mental health practices would best address high schooler concerns.