Taking care of our mental health is just as important as our physical health, and letting students and staff take mental health days is paying off in one school system.

It’s all about breaking the cycle and keeping people out of jail and cutting down on homelessness — and saving taxpayers money at the same time.

According to the American Psychological Association, 90% of Gen Z — which the U.S. Census classifies as people born from 1997 to 2013 — in 2022 had experienced psychological or physical symptoms as a result of stress within a time period of one year.

The following article touches on mental health as it pertains to those who have worked on the frontlines during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the real emotional stories we cover play out in the documentary above. Health care turned upside-downIn March 2020, the world was flipped upside-down, and because of that, there have been and continue to be many who have experienced difficult moments, some of which have led to real mental health crises. As a society, we’re constantly putting an emphasis on physical health, which is important, but somewhere along the way, it seems as though mental health was forgotten. This certainly wasn’t someone who suffered from mental health conditions or depression for years. Watch our entire special, What Lies Beneath: Managing Mental Health, above.