Through the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, I felt myself growing depressed from a lack of contact with friends and anxious about my prospects for the future.

I was not alone: one study determined that after a single month in quarantine, 22.6% of students experienced depression and 18.9% reported anxiety.

A recent statistic reveals that less than half of Gen Z (those born from 1995 to 2010) report excellent or very good mental health. Furthermore, 1 in 5 teenagers experience mental illness. The same percentage consider suicide, and that number jumps dramatically in regard to lesbian, gay, and bisexual teens.

For some teenagers, mental health conditions are genetic. For others, they are prompted from outside factors such as academic pressure, an unstable household, social or cultural expectations, and substance abuse. Regardless of the circumstance, mental health is a serious issue for teenagers, and one that needs to be addressed.

One teen describes depression as “feeling empty and alone ... like you’re trapped in this tiny box with no escape.” Another reminds people that “learning to manage depression can take a long time, and it’s not as simple as just feeling better one day.” Both emphasize the importance of seeking help, which can mean taking time off from school and other obligations.

But society is not very open to this idea. Many teens can testify to the education system dismissing the idea of anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders and insisting that “school comes first.”

Admittedly, more schools are taking action to address mental health — as many as 80% of students receiving mental health services do so in a school environment. Nonetheless, the dismissal of mental illness in the face of academic achievement could contribute to the dropout rate of high school students with depression, which is twice as high compared to their peers.

Many teens, including myself, feel overwhelmed by the looming threat of college applications, the SAT, and the continuous stream of questions from adults asking us what we plan to do with our lives, factors that have all been inexplicably altered by the arrival of COVID-19.

College is a topic that has long been on my mind. When I entered sophomore year last fall, I felt that I was on the right track: good grades, extracurriculars, and a general sense of what I wanted to do. As school carried on, I had occasional moments of anxiety or stressful nights when an assignment was due, but those emotions never dominated my life.

I was busy, but I wasn’t completing work alone in my room. I was at school, surrounded by teachers and classmates. I didn’t have time to endlessly scroll on social media, or spend hours a day on Netflix, or excessively worry about my future.

But when quarantine began, all of these venues opened up. Suddenly, I was no longer surrounded by people who understood the challenges that come with high school and were enduring them alongside me. I was surrounded by my family. And as much as I love them, their reminder that “they were teenagers once too” and constant advice came nowhere close to the camaraderie of my peers.

Furthermore, without the unequivocal support of my teachers, it became difficult to maintain my same drive. Why should I bother studying for the SAT when it might get cancelled? Why should I attend virtual college events when in-person classes might not even be offered?

For many teenagers, the factors that will have the greatest impact on our lives are the ones we had no control over: global warming, the state of the economy, political leaders, the current pandemic. We are entering a world that has been considerably influenced, often in negative ways, by those who came before us.

We feel not only an immense pressure but a personal responsibility to fix everything wrong in our world.

Try to imagine what we teenagers are going through. Besides the immense disappointment of virtual education, cancelled events, and continued isolation from friends, we still need to navigate the course of high school, now without the support of so many people we counted on.

We need the support of parents and other involved adults in our lives now more than ever. As one teen said, “I wish people understood that although I struggle with depression, it does not define me. I wish they understood that they don’t need to try to ‘fix’ us or ‘heal’ us. The best thing they can do is listen and be there.”

Maria Proulx of Ledyard is a junior at Saint Bernard School.