The Problem with ‘Mental-Health Days’ at Schools

T here’s a rising trend for states to write legislation incorporating “mental health” as a valid excuse for student absences. Illinois joined the trend this year, following multiple other states in the two previous years. What’s more, some school districts closed early for the Thanksgiving break so that educators too could “rest and focus on mental health.”

Since the start of the pandemic, adolescent rates of depression and anxiety have doubled. While COVID-19 and school closures have had a distinct impact, in reality, student mental health was in precipitous decline even before the pandemic.

That said, the existence of a problem does not thereby justify any reaction. Simply because I have a fever doesn’t mean I should grab pills willy-nilly from a medicine cabinet, and anyone who advises me against doing so does not stand in opposition to my health. With that in mind, what are the benefits and drawbacks of mental-health days?

All the popular articles that I’ve read open with the alarming statistics about student mental health and then propose days off as a response without any evidence that they actually, you know, help. At worst, they merely link internally to other articles that propose their use without proof. At best, they cite a doctor’s positive appraisal, a glorified appeal to authority. In reality, mental-health days are a newer phenomenon, and so research on them remains sparse.

Still, we can look at similar phenomena for insight. For example, extended vacations for adults — let’s call them mental-health weeks — do in fact have a benefit for an employee’s state of mind, but surveys find that these benefits last for only a few days. A trip to a beach might be enjoyable but does little when an employee returns to the humdrum of life. We can take Tylenol, but the pain inevitably returns.

If anything, avoiding and wallowing seem the exact opposite of what a student struggling with anxiety or depression would need. If a week of vacation does little for adults, how would a day left home alone to ruminate precipitate any meaningful change in a child’s mental state?

Any cure inevitably carries side effects, and we must factor these trade-offs into the discussion. What happens when we pathologize the normal stressors and anxieties of day-to-day life? If anything, as continuing a limp to avoid pain might cause more holistic bodily harm in the long run, “mental-health days” could alleviate immediate distress but facilitate habits that only worsen anxiety and depression in the long run.

In the popular essay “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff draw attention to a basic tenet of psychology: If you want to help someone with an anxiety or fear, avoidance will only worsen the problem. They use an elevator phobia as an example. If you want such a person to maintain their fear for life, keep them away from elevators. If you want them to conquer that fear, expose them to it until they develop resilience.

By popularizing mental-health days, we are encouraging our students to allow the world to dictate their emotions in place of teaching self-regulation and emotional control. We teach them that the anxiety that we all feel from time to time is a justification for avoidance. Rather than institutionalizing coping mechanisms, we must either address root societal causes or help students to develop beneficial personal habits.

Regarding the societal, there is a stark rise in student anxiety and depression that we should address. In The Atlantic, Julia Twenge meticulously details the harmful effects of social media on adolescent mental health. In place of a Band-Aid such as mental-health days, what if adults took cellphone and social-media addictions seriously? Districts propose wellness days, ignore the causes of a “mental-health crisis” among teenagers, and call it a solution.

The reality is, however, that — while individual classes or schools can institute smartphone bans — a society-wide “social-media ban for children” is not a feasible solution. Bouts of depression and anxiety are regular aspects of human life. As one therapist observed, “When we construe normal feeling as illness, we offer people an understanding of themselves as disordered” and so hinder growth and development of healthy psyches.

This brings us to the personal. In place of coddling the American mind, what if we built resilience back into our schools? What if we trained students in the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius and habits of virtue in Aristotle such that they can face the inevitable difficulties of life? And these would include habits of emotional awareness such as regular reflection, discussions with loved ones, or planned, appropriately timed days of rest.

We teachers should not be Grima Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings whispering safety and fear into the king’s ear but Gandalf beckoning students forth to face the challenges of daily life. In short, we must take mental health among our children seriously and so must not recommend avoidance as the cure.