These students were volunteering because of a genuine passion for giving back to the community. But a few also told me that the campaign work was a release, or as one student put it “a respite from our reality.” And while these young adults may not have used terms like anxiety and depression, I gradually got the sense that their “reality” was sometimes darker than their smiles would suggest.
In the most recent California Healthy Kids Survey, 1 in 3 high school juniors reported feeling chronically sad. An astonishing 1 in 5 freshmen and juniors reported contemplating suicide. The causes of student distress vary, but 1 in 3 teens told the American Psychological Association that stress was a primary driver, and the single biggest cause teens named was school.
To continue reading this op-ed by Ro Khanna, the U.S. representative-elect of California’s 17th Congressional District, Vicki Abeles, the producer/director of the film “Race to Nowhere” and author of “Beyond Measure: Rescuing an Overscheuled, Overtested, Underestimated Generation” (Simon & Schuster, 2015), and Tarun Galagali, an alumnus of Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, go to:
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