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Teen Anxiety Essay

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Anxiety in 2017 is not out of the ordinary, as the years progress it seems that stress, anxiety, and depression are becoming more and more prevalent, specifically within teenagers. This leads me to the question of why? What is the cause of this rapid incline? Studies show that the root cause of anxiety these days in teenagers is the pressure of school and education. The story of one high schooler displays the severity of anxiety, and how the intense pressures of school caused this. The student, Jake, suffered serious panic attacks, and bouts of depression where he couldn’t go to school for days, which only worsened his case, creating a vicious cycle that proved detrimental to his academics and mental health. His condition became so severe he even attempted suicide. All of this resulting from the demands of school (Denizet-Lewis). Jake is just one of many teenagers suffering from anxiety, in a study done by researchers at NYU, nearly half of high school students questioned report suffering depression or stress as a result of school. In another study about undergraduate college students 62% are reported to have anxiety, this percent has jumped from 50% in 2011 (James). This is a growing epidemic and it must be stopped, the effects of anxiety are destructive to a teenager’s health, and in many cases such as Jake’s, kids require several medications to function normally day-to-day. In order to fully understand this epidemic we can not only look at stress relating to teenagers

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