Trigger Warning: Suicide
The season of final exams is here and many students are beginning to feel the pressure of an entire semester weighing down on them. However, for some high school students finals week isn’t just the difference between an A or B – it’s a matter of life or death.
Palo Alto Unified School District represents a sort of utopian school system. Right in the heart of the Silicon Valley, the school district ranks at 18th in the country. The Palo Alto Area also lays in the shadow of Stanford University, one of the most prestigious universities in the nation. It’s 2016 acceptance rate is only 4.8%, which is lower than Harvard’s by a good .8%. The students in Palo Alto are linked with high grades, high test scores, and a community where parents earn one of the highest median incomes in the nation. Recently, some of the nations best and brightest have also been linked to a startling amount of suicides.
In the past 6 years, Gunn High School, one of the schools in Palo Alto Unified, has already experienced 2 suicide-clusters resulting in the death of over 5 students. In an article featured in The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin stated, “By late March, 42 Gunn students had been hospitalized or treated for suicidal thoughts.”
The pressure put on these students seems unfounded; they live comfortably, they go to one of the best schools in the nation, and they seem to “do better” than most of the country. Yet something about the area breeds a toxic atmosphere that pushes students to their very edge.
The success of these students is grounded in their stresses and anxieties. The students of the Palo Alto Unified School District represent an emerging culture among the upper-middle class. Parents pay more to live in good school districts where their students will do well. This in turn puts pressure on the schools to produce satisfactory results, which creates a culture where excellence is indirectly valued above the mental state of the students.
Despite the relative success of the upper-middle class schooling system, it’s important to remember that there are students who drown in this high achieving culture. We, as a society, should actively work to fix this problem. Students with mental health issues need to be provided resources to match the intensity of the pressures being placed upon them. It’s also time to examine our definition of success in the upper-middle class community. What do you value more – a student’s life and mental health, or what college they attend?
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
