When Everyone's Drowning: Real Talk About South Africa's November Mental Health Pressure Cooker

I know, I know. Another article about exam stress. But here's the thing—I'm writing this at 11 PM with load-shedding, listening to my neighbor's kid having their third meltdown this week, and I just realized something.

We keep writing about exam stress like it's just about the students.

Wrong.

The Truth Nobody's Saying Out Loud

Last November, I sat in my car outside Pick n Pay and cried. Me. A mental health professional. Because the exam stress in my house was so thick you could spread it on toast. My youngest, a First-Year student, was falling apart, I was falling apart pretending not to fall apart.

(We're all just humans trying to hold it together while the wheels come off.)

Here's what the data tells us: South Africa ranks in the bottom three countries globally for mental health, with over 25% of us dealing with probable depression. And November? It's when that pressure cooker really starts whistling.

What Exam Season Actually Looks Like

You want the clinical version? Chronic exam stress presents as persistent fatigue, headaches, appetite changes, and sleep disruption.

You want the real version? It's:

• Your Grade 11 suddenly can't eat breakfast without gagging

• You drinking that third cup of coffee at 9 PM "to help them study"

• The Grade 8 sibling acting out because negative attention beats no attention

• Everyone pretending tomorrow's Math Paper 2 isn't basically determining someone's entire future

And the kicker? Only 36% of young South Africans have ever talked to their parents about mental health. Ever.

So we're all drowning in separate rooms of the same house.

Why "Just Breathe" Doesn't Work When You Can't Breathe

Here's the thing about traditional exam stress advice—it assumes a functional system. Take breaks! (During load-shedding?) Practice self-care! (With what time?) Get adequate sleep! (Really?)

But there's this other truth hiding underneath all the dysfunction: Those study breaks aren't rewards—they're literally necessary for your brain to process information. That radical idea of aiming for the B you need instead of the A* nobody asked for? Revolutionary.

What actually helps (and I learned this the hard way):

The Ugly-Cry Protocol Sometimes you need to let everyone fall apart. Together. In the living room. With the dog looking concerned. Because pretending to be okay is exhausting, and exhaustion makes everything worse.

The "Good Enough" Revolution Your child doesn't need to be perfect. You don't need to be the perfect support system. Some days, good enough is ordering takeout and everyone studying in the same room so nobody dies alone.

The Truth About Comparison Every other family looks like they're handling it better. (Spoiler: They're not. I'm a therapist. I know everyone's secrets. Nobody's okay in November.)

The Resources That Actually Exist

Let's talk practical, because teletherapy is actually accessible now, and SADAG runs a suicide crisis helpline (0800 567 567) that saves lives.

But also:

• Those WhatsApp groups where parents admit they're not coping

• The teacher who'll listen even if they can't fix anything

• That 91% of young people who say they'd try to help a peer with mental health issues

Sometimes the resource is just someone else saying, "This is impossibly hard, right?"

The Part Where I Don't Pretend It Gets Better

Look, I could tie this up with a bow. Tell you about resilience and growth through adversity. But you know what? November in South Africa is going to be hard. The system is broken—we have a 91% treatment gap in mental health care. Your kid might fail. You might fail them.

But somehow—and I can't explain this part—we keep showing up.

Not because we're strong. Not because we're resilient. But because tomorrow morning, someone needs to make sandwiches and find clean socks and pretend that Life Sciences isn't the end of the world.

And maybe that's enough. Maybe showing up messy is better than not showing up at all.

P.S. - If you're reading this at 2 AM because your child is still studying, make them tea. Make yourself tea. Remember that exam results are not life sentences, even though November makes it feel like they are. And know that somewhere, another parent is also Googling "is it normal to want to run away during exam season?"

(It is.)