Methodology

Introduction (road map)

With Mental health becoming more common after the 2020 quarantine, it puts students at a higher risk of depression and anxiety. With middle school coming with its own challenges and new changes, young teens will be faced with the struggle of mental health. With most teens in middle school facing puberty and getting social media, the only thing that seems to matter is fitting in and becoming popular. Trying to fit in and blend with the “cool kids” can cause students to fall into peer pressure, bullying, and cliques. These subjective groups are creating a toll on those teens who aren’t included

Problem Statement and purpose

Alcohol, drugs, and bullying in middle school have been on a considerable rise worldwide. These substances and actions can create many potential problems in a child’s future; whether it is, increased suicide rates, crimes, education, or safety, these things will all impact the student’s life and the community. Every kid or adult has been faced with peer pressure one way or another, and many people fall into it, creating lifetime addictions or putting your and others’ lives at risk. Without more prevention and education on drinking, drugs and bullying, this problem will continue to rise. This paper argues that these problems can be minimized by creating more prevention in middle schools by creating a fun and safe club where students can feel more connected with their peers while being educated on the potential dangers they might face and how to respond to them.

Reminder of the Research Questions

After seeing the number of students that are affected by emotional wellness in middle school and gathering research on the different aspects of mental health in middle schools, research questions and a hypothesis can be proposed.

1. What do you think is the main cause of mental health disorders?

2. Do you think social media has an impact on emotional wellness? Why?

3. Why do middle schoolers abuse illegal substances at their age?

4. How does bullying / cyberbullying have an impact on kids?

5. What can young teens do to avoid potentially harmful situations?

I believe that students who struggle with their mental health would prosper if resources like counseling or groups where they can learn about coping with mental health and everyday challenges were more accessible.

Participants of the Study

Mrs. Brosch (Dunlap Valley Counselor)- We met to communicate at the beginning of November to break down the causes of teen mental health into a few categories. From there we met every other wednesday to meet with TAB (teens against bullying) and communicated after every meeting in person and on the phone to communicate on what we heard and did in club.

TABDD (Teens Against Bullying Drinking and Drugs)- Over the past few months, I have been restarting a club based on prevention, kindness, and leadership. With this, I have connected with many middle school students and talked to the group about what they feel are issues in their school.

Research Design and Procedures/Data Analysis

After compiling research from many professionals organizations, I started working with Dunlap Valley and connected with their new counselor. After that Mrs. Brosch (counselor) and I had a phone call and set up a meeting. We then broke down the main causes we felt affected the students' mental health the most. After we discussed all of the main points and goals of the new and improved club TAB (teens against bullying) we started to get the club's name out and scheduled a meeting. To do that I went into every homeroom at the middle school and gave a quick overview of our club and why it's important. The past few meetings we have had a smaller group but tackled big projects; we took kindness quotes and put them on every students locker , we made positive quote posters and put them all around the school, wrote inspirational quotes in chalk at the front of the school, and during all of this we have been discussing deeper topics like drinking, drugs, and peer pressure to allow for more education on these scary topics. During this I have taken a lot away from each and every meeting and communicating with my club members. With that I took my research and observations and sorted them into different sections which I used later on as my subhead topics.

Limitation

One of the biggest limitations I faced was Interviews, the challenge i faced was because of student confidentiality and school rules. I was not allowed to release names or do a one on one interview with a student which made me do a less formal and general interview. Another limitation I faced was definitely time, with my busy schedule it was hard to time manage and find time to work out side of school and sports. I over came both of these by working on my project during any free time I have outside of school and choosing to do school work instead of going out with friends every weekend. For my interviews I was able to use my connections to step into a science class at the middle school to observe students behaviors and lead Teens against Bullying where I was able to get important data about the students mental health trends.

Ethical issues

Mental health is most of the time seen as embarrassing, weird, shameful, attention seeking and dramatic. For middle schoolers reputation is all that matters causing students to hold in there emotions and not getting the help they need. With this project i wanted to give awareness and advice to those who are going through a rough patch and dont know what it do or who to go to. I also hope that with more awareness more adults, professionals, and kids will take theirs and everyone else’s mental health more seriously so that we can get rid of the connotation that mental health issues are a bad thing that we should be ashamed of.