A couple of months ago, I called my younger sister, who is one of my best friends and is currently a junior in high school. Her normally sunny disposition was clouded and troubled, and I learned that she had been up multiple times that week comforting a friend in an intense depressive spell.
She couldn’t understand why her life would be so good and she would have a young friend dealing with this level of hardship.
Between my sisters and I, we’ve known young friends with emotionally abusive home lives, sexual assault experiences and simple mental health issues ranging from depression to obsessive compulsive disorder. As a result, I believe the best thing we can do for rising generations is teach them how to be healthy individuals. Being able to cope with anxiety, OCD, body image or even life struggles is so important to well-being, and that is something severely lacking in the United States.
The National Institute of Mental Health estimated that 18 percent of U.S. adults had identified with a mental health problem, they also found that the “lifetime prevalence of eating disorders was 2.7%” in adolescents (boys and girls). This is also important in the light of recent mass shootings, supposedly brought on by ill-adjusted adult citizens.
I believe that increasing the scope of school counselors would help to accomplish this, and therefore I support House Bill 81, which would direct the Utah State Board of Education to define the scope of what school counselors should do and report back to the Legislature.
In order to bring about this change, we should contact our state representatives and, if the bill passes, contact your local legislators and follow-up with their decisions.
Amanda Martin, Provo
