The somewhat paradoxical answer I came to was that the kids at E High have the "advantage" of everyone around them undergoing basically the same stresses. That means that their parents and peers can teach them-- these are the ways to deal with the shit life hands you.** There are a lot of differet coping mechanisms which people are taught and encouraged in, and everyone understands that life will be hard enough that you'll need to use them. This strikes me as an improvement over the suburbs, where if you hurt, you're weird.

I find that in the rich white emo-kids highschools--at least the ones my friends and I went to--no one was necessarily there to teach you about the shit life hands you. Or how to deal with it when it happened.

Some people did teach about that. And they were the good ones. And some people not in the schools taught about that.

But mostly everyone's priority was the AP exams.