Sacramento youth leaders say academic stress is at all-time high

SACRAMENTO — Many high school students say academic stress is at an all-time high. Some Sacramento teens raised awareness at city hall about how stressful it is growing up nowadays.

Anshika Kakar, an Inderkum High School sophomore, is part of a Sacramento Summer at City Hall team that surveyed students about what's causing stress.

"The biggest thing they said was intense workload, uncertainty about their future as well as college admissions with the rates being lower than ever," Kakar said.

"School is a big part of people's lives," Inderkum junior Kora Awwad said. "They spend more time at school than they do at home."

These students say the pressure can lead to unhealthy lifestyles.

"Many people as students nowadays, they turn to drugs, or they go into depression, have anxiety," Kakar said.

Sarah Musser, Sacramento's recreation general supervisor, said "there's really no pause" from the stress and pressure from society, school, and extracurriculars for Generation Z, which is still trying to overcome learning loss from the pandemic.

"They missed core social aspects of growing up, they missed core school experiences," Musser said.

Young leaders are calling on the Sacramento City Council to fund new stress relief resources.

"To have this after-school program where they have peer mentoring, mental health support, college prep, school management guidance, tutoring," Kakar said.

Their goal is to reduce the hardships that come with growing up.

"We're attacking a problem at its root, which is schools," Kakar said.

"If you can prevent it from the earliest stage it changes so much in people's lives," Awwad said.

The students are asking city leaders to use cannabis business revenue that's earmarked for youth programs to pay for this new outreach effort.