Seated at the lunch table, your friends are talking about a hangout they are planning that doesn’t involve you. You stare at the wall, wondering why they do this to you, why they talk about all the fun they are going to have, but never once mention your name. You feel that you’re not good enough for them, or that maybe you did something wrong that you don’t remember–so many thoughts running through your head that you don’t know what to do. People would never know that from looking at you because you always have a smile on your face. That’s what masking mental health is.

Students mask or hide their true feelings every day, yet outwardly, most seem to be the happiest people, with the biggest smiles on their faces. Not every smile is genuine; some are merely a mask.

Though so many kids do it, masking their mental health is not always an easy thing to do; it takes effort. It can feel draining and lonely, and make people feel desensitized.

“It felt like putting on a show for everyone else. It was numbing, the whiplash I’d get from acting so happy and perfect to getting home and wanting only to be alone in my room,” junior Sadie Reveles said.

People hiding their feelings is not always constant; it can come in like waves on a beach. Sometimes people go from feeling sad and depressed to feeling happier or less exhausted, then right back to that original feeling of sadness.

“Lonely, like no one actually knew me. Then, when I felt better and happy, it was short-lived after realizing the sadness was still there, I was just masking it,” sophomore Isobel Risser said.

The big question a lot of people ask is ‘why don’t people speak up about their mental health?’, especially when people feel like this. It’s not the easiest question to answer, as there are so many possible reasons. Some people could be scared of opening up to others, some could feel powerless when bringing attention to it, or maybe some don’t know how to bring up their emotions to others without feeling judged.

“They feel ashamed or that someone else is probably going through worse, ‘why am I feeling like this when I have food in my stomach and a roof over my head?’” sophomore La’Niah Cisneros said.

Some people feel powerless when sharing their emotions because they are opening up to others and are unsure of how they will be received. It is a situation they can’t control, making them feel as though they have no power.

Gender is a big influence on the way people view mental health in each other, as it is often seen as going against the social norm. Some men believe that if they show their emotions, then they will be seen as weak or not as manly.

“When it comes to men at the bare minimum, I feel like the majority of people who hide it do it because they think that sharing their feelings would make them ‘less of a man’,” senior Kier Johnson said.

Students tend to struggle more with their mental health when in school, as the pressure of grades, sports, and other activities all come together on top of things like jobs and other out-of-school responsibilities.

A survey went out where students were asked questions about mental health, and masking mental health issues.

According to that survey, 75 percent of students have experienced mental health problems in their lives, and 40 percent of people say it has been worse in the last three months since school started. Students were also asked these same questions, about their mental health, during the summer. The answers were drastically different. Only ten percent of students experienced bad mental health in the summer, while 75 percent of them found that their mental health wasn’t as bad.

They were also asked questions about stress from the past three months, compared to during summer break. 82 percent of students claim that they have experienced stress almost all the time since school started, while during the summer, it was only twenty percent.

Some people give off signs that they are struggling with their mental health, whether they realise it or not. It could be as simple as a change in clothing to something as big as their eating habits.

“A lot of times it’s a change in behavior…maybe they’re dressing different. Sometimes there’s a change in your eating, or you’re sleeping. Sometimes it’s their attendance at school, like they’ll stop coming to school or stop answering your texts or your phone calls,” school counselor Amy Wicklund said.

There are always resources available to help students. If students don’t know where to go, they can visit a counselor, and they will help guide people from there.

You never know what someone is going through, so always make sure to check up on your friends and classmates and always be kind; it just might help them.