As a teenager in Oakland, a plethora of things stress me out. A plethora of things here also give me joy.
Growing up in a city that is both so warm and full of community but that at the same time can be unsafe (and is regularly represented as dangerous in the media) is challenging.
To write about health, I decided to reach out to teens attending three different Oakland high schools. I asked all of them two questions: “What gives you the most stress?” and “What gives you the most joy in Oakland?”
These teenagers are all different in so many ways, but every one of them lives in the Town.
Oakland Unified School District has a set of wellness policies that address nutrition, physical, and mental health. Maya Mitchell, a high school senior at Oakland Tech, an OUSD school, cited stress factors that these policies might not be able to counter. “Gun violence and violence in general are one of my top stressors,” Mitchell said. “Like at school events, people are checked for guns due to shootings that have happened at graduations.”
Oakland has a higher violent crime rate than San Francisco, Sacramento, and the rest of California as a whole.
August Kerley, a senior at Bishop O’Dowd High School, a private Catholic school, shared similar concerns. “If crime is not in the top three stressors of living in Oakland, I don’t know what is.”
When Evan Green, a Latitude High Junior cited the same concern she relayed a lack of necessity to elaborate. “The violence here is pretty self-explanatory.”
For teenagers in Oakland, the fear of crime, violence, and shootings is normalized.
Although high schools have mental health and overall health policies in place, the fear of violence is not exactly easily cured.
Schools in California have boosted their counseling staff by 30 percent in the past five years, according to the California Department of Education. But the Oakland teens I spoke with are still worried.
California is an expensive place to live, notorious for its sky-high cost of living. Income and wealth inequality also causes stress for teens. “The prices for food, like basic lunch money, is stressful,” Mitchell said. “Everything is so expensive, and the growing rate of unhoused people related to that is insane.”
Young women often feel unsafe in Oakland’s streets. Green told me about a time when an unhoused man followed her and her friends.
Despite the stress Oakland teens face, many experience immense joy in living in the Town. “I love the vibe, the culture, I grew up here,” Green said with pride “It’s my city, you know?” Events and the environment are her top sources of joy in Oakland. “Community events happen all the time here, which gives me joy, and the parks, sunsets, and views are beautiful. We also have really good food.”
Kerley also reflected on the community and beauty of Oakland, as a people and a place.
Overall, teen mental health is an important subject. Determining stressors and factors of joy is important to maintaining good mental health for young people, especially in between school work, family, and social life.
The Oakland teenagers I spoke to have a strong sense of love for their city, but their mental health is hampered by worldwide issues of poverty, crime, and housing. Oakland has forced the generations developing as adults within it to become familiar early on with real world issues.
Teen mental health is a hot topic for many news outlets and social media posts, but drawing parallels between stress, joy, and community is the aim of this article: not just another headline about teen depression.
Although this is stressful and frightening, Oakland teens have experiences that will propel them far into the world outside of home, and allow them to maintain their love for where they grew up. Like Mitchell said, “It’s hard, but I love it here.”
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