It’s now been nearly two years since the U.S. Surgeon General warned about a mental health crisis among the nation’s youth, citing increases in depression and anxiety exacerbated by the pandemic.
The state is allocating billions of dollars to the issue, with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office calling attention to chronic sadness and major depressive episodes among California’s kids.
For Culver City High School senior Emi Sakamoto, the so-called “youth mental health crisis” is not some abstract concept. Instead, it brings up visceral images:
“Sitting in classrooms right before a test and seeing how many legs are shaking, how many kids have their heads on their desks … the eyes that I see as I’m walking through hallways, the bathroom stalls that I walk in with just plumes of vape smoke,” Sakamoto said.
Sakamoto remembered a formative moment from class a couple years back. Distraught after the death of her grandfather, she was crying when a classmate she rarely talked with silently offered her hand.
“And we just sat there for 15, 20 minutes … What I needed in that moment was just some recognition of ‘I’m here for you,’” she said.
Sakamoto wants to be there in the same way for her fellow students by advocating for more mental health education. And she believes there’s a lack of instruction on fundamental skills on how the mind works and “how to develop a baseline mental wellbeing that every single student needs in order to succeed in life.”
Sakamoto said she felt complicit if she didn’t speak up, so she decided to do something about the suffering she experienced at school.
‘Struggling internally’
With the help of a supportive school counselor and other mentors, Sakamoto authored a resolution that cleared the Culver City Unified…
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