Taking a day off for mental health wouldn’t just be about escaping stress, it would help students to prioritize balance and their emotional well-being. Mental health days would give students an opportunity to show up to school more refreshed, focused, and ready to succeed academically.
A mental health day is described as a day taken off from work, school, or other obligations to prioritize and focus on one’s psychological health. This has become an increasingly accepted idea, especially in the work place, over the last few years, but the amount of companies in the U.S. that utilize mental health days is still only 15 percent.
At Elkhorn North, mental health days qualify as an excused absence, but this is not information that is actively presented to students.
“I didn’t even know we had a policy for mental health days,” sophomore Abby Boogerd said.
Within the handbook, mental health days are vaguely mentioned when discussing illness in general, and it also talks about how the validity of this absence might have to be checked with a physician’s note.
For many students, they may not be able to get a statement from their physician, but they might still need a day or two off from school.
On Powerschool, there are 19 different attendance codes listed for almost all situations. Within this there are three different codes for being out of town and five codes for medically excused absences. Excluded from this is a mental health day. Students at Elkhorn North could benefit greatly from being informed about and utilizing the mental health day policy.
Many students are involved in multiple different sports and extracurricular activities that take up a lot of their time. On top of this, most teachers assign homework every night and expect students to prioritize their class.
“With all my classes, the work starts to pile up and I feel like I could use a break,” sophomore Lennon Johnson said.
Mental health days could help students recharge so they can better manage their workload and balance it with their extracurriculars. Students can often experience burnout due to the fast-paced life they are expected to live. One of the main reasons students miss school chronically is burnout, and mental health days could help to stop this before it occurs.
Another major benefit of mental health days is the time they give students to catch up on missed sleep.
A study done by Benjamin Franklin International school shows that poor sleep quality and a lack of sleep can be linked to poor grades and lack of focus.
“It’s near impossible for students to retain information when they are sleep deprived,” AP Psychology teacher Ashley Anderson said.
It is recommended that teenagers get eight to ten hours of sleep each night, but with school and extracurriculars, most students are not getting this. The average high schooler gets seven hours, and this number vastly decreases as students become more involved.
A day off would give students time to catch up on sleep, relax, and also attend to different hobbies they do not have time for during a regular school day. Whether it is something active like taking a walk, or something indoors like watching a show, students would have free time for different self care activities.
Elkhorn North pushes students to get involved and encourages them to join multiple sports and clubs. This expectation could become much more achievable for students if they utilize mental health days.
Mental health days would also encourage healthy habits and a more balanced life in the students future. If students spend their high school years with no time to relax, they could end up overworking themselves in the future, or they could end up on the opposite side of the spectrum with no discipline in their work life. A successful life is achieved through a balance between work and personal life, and mental health days help to increase this balance.
A day off could also give students the opportunity to catch up on other work they have not completed.
“A lot of the time I am more productive when I’m not at school,” Johnson said. “I’m more focused and it makes it easy for me to get everything done.”
Mental health days would also help to improve overall psychological health for teens. Students face a lot of new challenges as they experience high school, whether it is harder classes or drama with friends. No one has a perfect high school experience.
“If students knew mental health days were excused, it would send the message that students’ mental health matters just as much as their education,” sophomore Thomas Wagner said.
This could help teens feel supported and show them that their school truly values them as human beings, rather than just students.
However, some teachers have some concerns about the implementation of this policy.
“Absenteeism plays a negative role on a student’s ability to do well,” Anderson said.
While it is true that absences can be linked to bad academic performance, mental health days being implemented in schools has shown a trend towards better brain function within students.
Schools could keep this system fair by having two designated mental health days per semester, on top of the current policy of eight days of excused absences per semester. This would allow students a break, while ensuring they are still going to school.
“It would give us a break when we need more than just the weekend,” Wagner said.
While Elkhorn North does have resources for students to help their mental health, taking a break is valuable. A clear policy is needed to ensure students know that they can take a day off and don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for this.
