The Future of Mental Health At Riverdale
Ask any Upper School student about their to-do list and they will rattle off a seemingly never-ending catalog of upcoming priorities: math tests, Constructing America essays, basketball games, debate tournaments. It’s clear that Riverdale places great emphasis on its academic, athletic, and extracurricular rigor, but is the same emphasis given to mental health?
On the one hand, this inclination towards academic excellence can encourage students to step outside of their comfort zones and advance their intellectual growth. But within a prominent culture of productivity and fast-paced work, it is important to set boundaries to uphold the wellbeing of our students and faculty.
Due to the unprecedented demand for mental health and counseling resources during the pandemic, Riverdale, as an institution, has had to take steps to support students and faculty more than ever. The Department of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging has also started de-stressing programming, including stress ball making and aromatherapy. Still, the pandemic added countless layers of uncertainty that left many members of the community to deal with isolation and loss while simultaneously trying to navigate the stressors of school life. The unspoken pressure to take on challenging classes and extracurriculars, while still achieving near-perfect scores remained, and for seniors, college applications only heightened this pressure. Even amidst the pandemic, taking a second to rest or ask for help felt simply incompatible with this standard.
We usually minimize our own issues or things that we’re going through, Ms. Allison Finder, Middle and Upper School Counselor, said. The best time to meet with a counselor is before you have that crisis moment so that you’re taking care of yourself preventatively. Ms. Finder described how many students felt like they were hitting a wall during our previous academic year, as the effects of burnout and accumulated stress began to compromise their academic performance. For over a year and a half, the school community has been operating in a sort of survival mode, constantly having to abide by Covid-19 safety mandates and spending more time in isolation. These are only some of the factors that lead to increased stress and anxiety, but being in this consistent state, Ms. Finder said, has altered the way our brains function, and, consequently, the way we operate in a seemingly normal school setting. This is why our ongoing return to normalcy has presented its challenges, and why we should continue to integrate counseling and mental breaks into our routines.
In the current school year, new students like ninth-grader Adriana Lewis have felt the limitations of Riverdale’s mental health practices. “[Riverdale] is very competitive. You are always expected to get the best grades and not really trying to understand the material. I’m just trying to do the best in the class,” she said. Lewis knows that her peers share this sentiment and has realized the importance of finding support systems early on. “We’re definitely all helping each other,” she said as she recalled the school nights when she was especially drained and looked to her peers for support. “We all knew that it [was] okay that we all didn’t do this one [assignment] yet, but that we really needed to get on with it.” Lewis and her classmates have cultivated a sense of kinship and trust amidst the challenges of entering the Upper School. They have been able to hold each other accountable for their work while also practicing empathy, which has allowed them to juggle academic responsibilities and mental fog. She added, “I think my friends are a really good support system and we all understand each other, that we are in the same boat.” Lewis continues to practice empathy with herself, but also hopes that the school will consider student recommendations to make structural change.
Upper School math teacher Mr. Bill Argenta can also attest to the guilt that can come with falling short of an A in a class and conflating oneís self-worth with academic performance. “I think we all tend to think that we've disappointed somebody else when in fact, it’s that we’ve disappointed ourselves,” Mr. Argenta said. He acknowledges that there is a disconnect between teachers who are working to cover the material on the curriculum and respond to students’ needs, and the students themselves, who are also making the transition to schedules filled with academic and extracurricular work. However, he added that teachers do strive to work in collaboration with students, and not exclusively as judges of academic performance. “We all need to learn how to accept those setbacks...that is another thing I’m grading you on is how do you react to that.” Mr. Argenta continues to instill this sense of perseverance in his students.
Senior Yoyo Feliz, who has dealt with heightened feelings of stress and anxiety while navigating the college process, has had to redefine what healthy productivity looks like. “I think productivity is seen as just doing work, but I think that definition is really dangerous,” she said. “How effective you are with your time, and using it in a positive light, is more useful.” Feliz reflected on the many forms that productivity has taken on ever since she began the college process in the spring. Until recently, she would have compared her relationship with her work as burdensome and almost mechanical: it was like “running on an engine,” she said. That is, until she began to feel the effects of burnout and knew she had hit a “wall.”
“I don’t feel like I had been putting myself first until I decided that avoiding stress was beneficial. I went through this realization that being drained all the time is not good for me. So after a little bit of self-care, I was able to write an essay that I actually enjoyed,” she said. Once Feliz shifted her focus from constantly pumping out college supplements to splitting up her routine with breaks and self-care, she began to produce more authentic and intentional work that she was proud of.
The struggles of the Riverdale community reflect the rise nationwide in adolescent reports of anxiety and other concerns as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite this, Riverdale does indeed have the power to rework the narrative surrounding success for its students. “We can give our best recommendations and our best advice and our insight into things, and sometimes that is counter to what a successful academic student looks like. So, I think, there are things that we are trying to think about structurally - how can we improve people’s sense of well-being?” said Ms. Finder about communicating with administrators.
The mental health programming we have seen in the past has served as a step in the right direction, but only worked to alleviate the symptoms of a culture of high academic achievement that is deeply ingrained in our schedules and classroom environments. On a structural level, students would benefit from more direct communication with administrators on our policies surrounding assessments and scheduling. Going forward, using our findings from mental health and wellness surveys to actually inform the way teachers plan our academic work could yield better student performance in the long term.
Students are encouraged to seek out help from the Counseling and Student Life departments and to communicate with their teachers and deans when necessary. Even brief check-ins can have positive, long-term effects on a student’s experience and bring our community closer to the changes we seek.
