5 / 12
(YRBS) done with Appleton
North freshmen and juniors,
when asked: “During the past
30 days, how many days was
your mental health not good?
“(Mental health includes stress,
depression, and problems with
emotions)” only 40.3 percent
of freshmen and 35.7 percent
of juniors answered 0 days;
the rest of them answered any-
where from 1 to over 14 days.
During the past 12 months, 29
percent of juniors felt so sad
and/or hopeless almost every
day for two weeks or more in
a row that they stopped doing
some usual
activities.
Mental illness affects many
students, even if others can’t
visibly observe it. Rarely is
depression simply the people
with dark clothes, or an aloof
attitude. So many students with
depression are immensely suc-
cessful in their academic and
extracurricular lives, but also
successful in hiding their pain.
“If you saw me in the hallway,
or if you sat next to me in class,
you wouldn’t be able to tell that
this is something that I struggle
with. Unless I told you,” she
said. It’s really hard for her to
keep a positive persona on at
school; to constantly pretend
that it’s okay when it is quite
the opposite. The night of the
intense bullying incident she
decided she wanted to kill her-
self and that it was not worth
living anymore. That terrifying
night, she ended up in the hos-
pital but knew it wasn’t worth
it and that she could get herself
out. At school the next day it
was back to normal. An out-
sider could never guess what
happened that night; would
never know how close she was
to not returning to Appleton
North. “The depression makes
everything really hard because
when you have depression,
half the time you feel sad and
half the time you feel nothing
at all,” she said. She went on a
new medication, started to see
a new counselor and things got
a bit better but senior year was
devastating.
Two more doctors and an
increased dosage later she felt
constantly tired and never her-
self. The depression hung over
her like a cloud, following her
everywhere she walked. She
has what’s called passive sui-
cidal thoughts which are de-
¿
ned by the Valley Behavioral
Health system as a desire to
die, but without a speci
¿
c plan
for carrying out the death. Even
just walking through the hall-
ways at North she thinks “may-
be it would be better if you just
popped the pills, or just crashed
that car,” but she always push-
es those thoughts away. “When
you have depression you don’t
see the world the way other
people see the world. You see
the world through a veil...that
makes everything grayed out,
not visually but emotionally.
You feel pain. That’s what a lot
of people don’t get.” She des-
perately wants to help others.
But what worsened the
depression was the realization
that she must help herself be-
fore she can begin to help oth-
ers. Even that was a struggle
because she sees herself in a
different light. So many look
at her and see beautiful, smart,
funny, and wise. This student
sees herself as stupid, ugly,
awkward, as someone people
don’t want to spend time with,
and someone who doesn’t de-
serve to have friends. Even
though she knows and under-
stands that other people never
see her that way, it doesn’t
change the way she sees her-
self. Just recently she stopped
eating in a very conscientious
and controlled manner. She de-
scribes it as an eating disorder
that’s linked to mental illness.
“I’ve stopped eating because I
don’t want to live anymore. But
I don’t want to end it all rapidly,
in one rapid
¿
re decision. So I
just stopped eating because that
way it will eventually be done
but it will take awhile. It’ll be
long, it’ll be drawn out, it’ll be
more painful for me, but I can
always turn back if I need to.”
You might see her laughing
in the hallway but will never
know she’s only eaten a protein
bar and protein shake. That’s
just to keep her going until 4
p.m. where she can go home
and sleep until the next morn-
ing. She’s falling behind in all
her schoolwork because she
just can’t get it done now that
she just sleeps. And that makes
everything worse because she
is a very high achieving student
and she wants to be successful.
Though this student feels
alone, she is most certainly not
the only student who experi-
ences mental illness. Accord-
ing to the National Alliance on
Mental Illness, 1 in 5 youth, or
20 percent (ages 13-18) have
a diagnosable mental illness.
Maybe this is you. Maybe it’s
your friend, your neighbor, sib-
ling or classmate. But whoever
it may be, they need to know
they’re not alone. They need to
know that you recognize what
they’re going through and that
you are aware of their struggles.
This is what she said: “What I
also want people to know is
that I really need your support
right now and I just really need
to know that you care. There’s
nothing really other people can
do except let me know that they
care, because I don’t care any-
more.”
AREYOUAWARE?
Appleton, Wisconsin February 2016 Vol. XXI
Issue I
Page 5
Statistic taken from the Youth Risk Behavioral Survey (YRBS) conducted at
Appleton North.
Statistic indicates responses of North Freshman class.
Graphics by
Nora Ptacek
During the past 12 months, did you ever feel
so sad or hopeless almost every day for two
weeks or more in a row that you stopped
doing some usual activities?
During the past 30 days, how many days was your mental health not
good? (Mental health includes stress, depression, and problems with
emotions.)
“If you saw me in
the hallway, or if
you sat next to me in
class, you wouldn’t
be able to tell that
this is something that
I struggle with.”
Ptacek
: an unseen battle, from page 1
TO GET HELP
If you or someone you
know needs help cop-
ing with mental illness or
thoughts of suicide please
contact one of these re-
sources for con
¿
dential as-
sistance:
National
Alliance on
Mental Illness Fox Valley-
http://www.namifoxvalley.
org/
Prevent Suicide Fox Cit-
ies-http://www.preventsui-
cidefoxcities.org/
School resources such
as the school psychologist
Mrs. Strick.
Statistic taken from the
Youth Risk Behavioral
Survey (YRBS) conduct-
ed at Appleton North.
Sta-
tistic indicates responses of
North Junior class.