We Need to Take Mental Health More Seriously
It has been one and a half months since the tragic suicide of a senior at our sister school, Andover. The suicide paralyzed both the Andover and Exeter communities and forced us all to face the issue of mental health. Well, at least the heart-breaking situation should have made us recognize that maintaining good mental health needs to be the top priority, especially in such a high-stress environment as Exeter. Yet, the Exeter community and our administration have not shown that they are willing to take steps to improve the mental health of our student body.
Our administration, as it should be, is adamant on continuing to ingrain values of equality within our community in terms of race and gender. But the focus on racial and gender equality has completely overshadowed the issue of mental health. Even in light of the tragedy at Andover, we have continued to have assemblies and conversations regarding the same topics that we have been talking about for years. The administration did not even send an email to the student body acknowledging the suicide after news of the tragedy broke. No information about emotional support opportunities has been offered to the general populus, no discussions regarding mental health have been organized by the administration, and after one week, the community pretty much stopped talking about mental health altogether.
It is hard to say that we need to talk about mental health on this campus. Not because anyone would disagree that it is a topic more than worthy of focus, but because the administration would need to make room for it in their agenda. If we were to talk about mental health, we would need to sacrifice time otherwise spent talking about racism, gender-oppression, feminism, sexual assault, and all the other typical subjects of conversation. And at a school where being politically correct seems to be a way of life for some people, it would be almost impossible to suggest to anyone outside of your friend group that our community should talk about suicide, depression, mental illness, etc in place of race or gender without being labeled a bigot. This fear applies to me especially. Not all of you may know me, but my name is Jordan Davidson; I am an Upper and a straight, white male who has lived in Fairfield County, Connecticut, my entire life. I am the last person who is “allowed” to say that we need to prioritize mental health over issues we have been constantly talking about since my prep year. But I have personally witnessed the effects of depression and bipolar disorder in friends and in larger communities. Some of my closest friends go to Andover and the toll that the suicide took on them was more than tremendous. Yet our community cannot seem to understand that we need to take a serious stance on mental health. It is imperative that we take measures to ensure that we are all in a good state of mind because nobody should have to suffer from the kind of pain the Andover student was in.
So view this as a call-to-action for the entirety of the Exeter community. The administration, faculty, students, alumni, trustees, parents, and anyone else involved with our school need to make an effort to prioritize mental health. For far too long our school has been reacting and responding to problems as they arise instead of addressing them before they start. It took ALES months to get the faculty to watch a video they created about racism on our campus and it took the sexual assault of multiple students before serious conversation began. We should never stop talking about the importance of equality, but we need to be able to discuss other prevalent issues as well. So, when thinking about mental health, let’s not make the same mistakes we have made in the past. It took a student suicide for our sister school to seriously discuss mental health; it should not take the same for us.