Like many education leaders, I’m alarmed by the youth mental health crisis. However, I’m also surprised by the limited solutions offered to go about tackling the youth mental health crisis.

In a 2022 CDC survey, 15.3% of youth aged 12-to-17 had current diagnoses of anxiety, and 7.5% of the same age group had current depression diagnoses. These numbers are likely a limited snapshot into the true mental health crisis within U.S. youth, as many of their concerns remain undiagnosed due to stigma and/or fear of speaking up.

It may not come as a surprise that women’s mental health is innately different than men’s, demonstrating the gendered dimension to tackling the youth mental health crisis. Anxiety, depression and eating disorders are more common in women. This gender difference begins to grow particularly during the middle school years; by the end of adolescence, young women experience twice as much depression as young men do, a trend that persists throughout life.

When young women experience poor mental health, their academic performance, social interactions, self-esteem and well-being can each suffer. As students enter into this cycle, they can subject themselves to a lack of motivation, increased feelings of anxiety and depression, social withdrawal — and ultimately — considering dropping out of school altogether.

Middle school students spend nearly two fifths of their waking hours in a classroom setting. What if these classroom hours were spent in an encouraging, safe and single-gender environment to meet students’ unique, gender-specific needs?

As founding principal and now executive director of a public, all-girls middle charter school Girls Athletic Leadership School Los Angeles (GALS LA), our gender-specific education allows us to employ tactics such as movement and wellness-driven curriculum, as well as provide unique mental health offerings to go about tackling the youth mental health crisis.

GALS LA curriculum is built to reflect a restorative community. We have one mental health counselor for every 50 students in our 187-student school, whereas the average U.S. school has one counselor for every 385 students. Our counselors facilitate student mediations, and young women are taught how to use their words to calmly address and resolve conflicts.

Read the full article about tackling the youth mental health crisis by Vanessa Garza at The 74.