Remember Ring Around the Rosie? It’s the old rhyme we used to sing as we twirled around in circles with our friends, and fell on the ground laughing. It never seemed too real to us, since no one we knew had the plague. But high school as we know it is connecting to that rhyme in a whole new way, with a whole new plage; Anxiety Disorders.

Cedar Cliff News says that 49% of the general population has anxiety, and that the amount of teens in that statistic has risen drastically. People in 3rd world countries are 5x less likely to develop anxiety than an american student. The two target groups are highschool and college students, and some say that it develops in elementary.

We are taught in school that you have to be great. We work in an environment where we are told you must do better around every corner. An environment full of due dates and test scores, which is what’s causing kids to develop crippling anxiety issues. There are a few different kinds of anxiety that have been developing : Math anxiety, Test anxiety, and social anxiety. All three are very different, yet quite the same. All of them trace back to stress and pressure. Pressure to do good, pressure to turn things in, pressure to turn 5 things in at the same time. Stress brought on by tests, stress brought on by being looked at, stress brought on by stress.

Although according to the National Association of School Psychologists, anywhere from 2-27% of adolescents have anxiety disorders, there is a cure. They say if we add mental health help in our schools, it would help these students with their problems, and possibly stop the symptoms before they ever start. If we were to add facilities into our school systems to screen for anxiety and treat students with it, there would be less cases where kids kill themselves over the stress.

There are so many suffering, and most in silence, from anxiety in high school. This could be brought on by being told to be better every day, but it can also be genetic. Aside from this, there is a cure. All we have to do is put faith in professionals, and admit them into the nursing staff at schools. Maybe if we do, we can stop the plague before it’s as deadly as the last one.