The main cause of stress for teens is school. Do you agree?

In my opini0n, I do not agree with this statement. Stress for teens could VARY from school to family problems. However, I believe that school is NOT the main cause of stress for teens; there are many root causes far more serious than school alone. 


 From websites and researches found from the internet, I can conclude that school is not the main cause of stress for teens.

From an article “Singapore: Suicide Among Teenagers Increased”, it shows an innovative study conducted by 3 doctors from the local institute of mental health. They examined suicide rates among teenagers.

Snapshot from article 1

As shown from the snap shot, they found out that teens in Singapore are mostly troubled by family issues or their own personal love life. They concluded that “FRICTION with parents and breaking up with boyfriends or girlfriends are the main factors that push Singapore's under-20s over the edge.”

Dr Fung said suicide is usually caused by a mix of factors. He also said 'But from our study, academic stress wasn't a major reason. It's usually relationship problems, especially with their parents.'

They could range from being reprimanded to being troubled by spats between their parents, said Dr Fung, deputy chief of IMH’s department of child and adolescent psychiatry.

The Samaritans of Singapore, which runs a help-line for troubled people agress with the

findings:

snapshot from article 2

The rest of the article also stated the findings of an American professor, David Shaffer who said, ‘Two main factors trigger suicides: getting into trouble, such as cheating, and losing a boyfriend or girlfriend,'

Lastly, Dr Fung also suggested, 'Educating their peers is the most important because who knows teenagers best? It's their friends.'


From this, don't you agree that relationship problems could be one of the main cause of teen stress? Can you imagine that teens go to the extent of killing themselves because of this problem? 


(http://acr.hrschool.org/mainfile.php/0117/88/)

Here's a video about the effects on teens with divorced parents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6XwUSq4Uk4

I think the effects are mostly due to being stressed out due to the relationship friction between her parents and having her parents to fight all the time and eventually get divorced. Do you think the girl in this video would openly tell her friends that her parents are divorced or just resort to other means to ease the pain of a broken family?  If you're in the girl's shoes, would you openly or proudly announce that your parents are divorced or just keep it to yourself instead of seeking help? OR Have you ever met anyone who just openly tells you that she/he have divorced parents? Not many right?



Apart from the article and video, I found an online forum called TEEN STRESS 911 and one of the questions posted is "Have you ever been a victim of Bullying? Or Do you know anyone who has been bullied? Please, share your story." 

From the many responses, one of the many caught my attention: 

http://www.teenstress911.com/fourm.html#/20120129/let-us-know-how-you-are-dealing-with-your-str-1227646/

Jessica shared her friend's consequence after being bullied for a long time. He committed suicide in the end as he battled with his inner stress for so long and could not handle the situation any more. This shows that teens could go to the extent of killing themselves because of bullying.

Thus, from the 3 sources, the article, video and forum, I can conclude that there are more serious root causes of stress than school alone. Although school do give us stress, however, it does not give us that depth of emotional damage than other causes such as DIVORCE, BULLYING and FRICTION IN RELATIONSHIPS. This long-term and tormenting emotional damage could haunt the victim more than you expect. The impact of stress from school can be lessened by friends and other solutions like listening to music. However, who can the victims of divorce, bullying and relationship problems turn to? They would try to resolve their problem themselves isn't it? And most of the means used to ease pain have not shown a positive consequences so far...




Lee Li Xuan (17)