Thank you to the Youth Advisory Council for the good work identifying top issues affecting youth in our area!

As a mental health therapist, I know that many factors influence these issues our youth face, including trauma, substance use and social determinants to health. One of the most common factors, however, is both almost universal and largely unacknowledged (except by adolescents themselves): chronic lack of sleep.

This issue is so prevalent that in 2014 the American Academy of Pediatrics published a major review of the research and strong policy statement recognizing that “insufficient sleep in adolescents as an important public health issue that significantly affects the health and safety, as well as the academic success, of our nation’s middle and high school students.” Further, the AAP clearly identified the one major, modifiable culprit: early school start times.

The AAP policy statement clearly outlines the research to support their recommendation that adolescents’ school start times should be no earlier than 8:30am, based on well documented physiological differences in the sleep/wake cycles of teens.

Our local middle and high school start times are much earlier for adolescents, contributing to the chronic lack of sleep that we know most adolescents suffer. Chronic loss of sleep has a negative impact on a number of key physical, mental and behavioral issues, including a majority of those identified by YAC. These have only worsened since 2014.

Delaying our middle and high school start times until 8:30 a.m. or later would lead to increased sleep resulting in improvements in academic performance, significant reductions in mental health problems and reductions in aggression and conduct problems. This is one major step we can take as a community to meaningfully address the issues identified by our youth.

LARRY LaCROSS,

Presque Isle