2022 Mental Health Essay Contest Awardee: Honorable Mention

Mental Health Awareness: My Personal Journey and the Next Steps

Sydney, Minnesota

September of 2021 was the worst month of my life. I’ve never struggled more with my anxiety, depression, perfectionism, and impostor syndrome than I did during that month. Every day felt like a nightmare. I compared myself to others constantly, pressured myself too much with my academics and my passions, and spent so much time on apps like Instagram, looking at people and wondering why I couldn’t be like them. Those pressures turned into my conscience, mocking me for every mistake, berating me, calling me a failure, and telling me I’d never, ever be good enough. The battles in my mind raged on, and I looked for some form of escape, any way to end the torment. That quickly led to me contemplating suicide. I remember one night staring at myself in the bathroom mirror after my parents had gone to bed, holding a knife to my wrist, daring myself to make the cut.

But then, I stopped. I looked at myself, wondering what I was doing. Why was I so desperate for an escape that I was considering ending my own life? I messaged some friends on Discord about what was going on, and they immediately directed me to the suicide hotline. Finally, I talked with someone on the phone for a solid 40 minutes, coming up with a plan on what to do and services that could help. That was the first step on my road to recovery. Now, several months later, after having gone to therapy and gotten the help I needed, I can’t say I’m fully healed, but that’s to be expected. A person’s mental health can’t be improved overnight, and it could even take years. But the closer they can get to feeling mentally sound is all the better.

So, how? How can we give the same opportunities to kids that don’t come from the best home environments? How can we properly tackle this epidemic? My plan consists of what I like to call the three types of connections: connections at school, connections at home, and connections with peers. By directing attention to these three links of a teenager’s life, I believe we can significantly improve mental health for teens across the nation.

Firstly, and arguably most importantly are the connections and services available in our schools. It’s where teens spend the most of their time and where a large portion of mental health issues stem from. Not only stress from assignments and tests, but social anxiety from peers, and of course, bullying and harassment. And despite schools’ efforts to have decent mental health resources, many students argue that they aren’t working. So what do we do? First, schools can start by hiring more certified therapists and psychologists that specialize in children’s development. Teenagers are still very much children, whose minds are still developing at a rapid rate, thanks to puberty. And while schools now may have social workers and experts who know what they’re doing, there are just too many students struggling with mental illness for a few people to handle. Having more trained professionals in the building that are always available, as small as it may seem, can go a long way. Another solution, if schools don’t have the funds to hire more staff members, could be introducing the discussion of mental health into aspects of the curriculum. It doesn’t need to take over every class, but slipping things in and making the presence of mental illness known is enough to intrigue students and make them want to dive into the topic deeper, like discussing mental disorders more heavily in psychology courses, or assigning books that feature characters struggling with mental health issues in English classes.

Next are the connections that teens have at home, most notably with their parents or guardians. To put it simply, the parents of today’s youth don’t have a whole lot of knowledge when it comes to mental health, and that’s okay. They grew up in an era where things existed, but simply weren’t talked about, and so it isn’t right to put the blame on them. One way we can strengthen these connections is by giving them specific resources for whatever their child is dealing with, such as advice from their pediatricians on what to read and where to go for help. It could point parents in the right direction for having conversations with their child and finding a way that both can figure out how to tackle their issues. Second, often parents will have get-togethers with neighbors for book clubs and community issues, so why not have some groups discussing mental health? Local governments could organize gatherings and clubs for parents and educators alike to discuss how to tackle mental illness even further and expand connections for parents of children going through the same thing.

Which leads to the last connection: Peers and other teens. The thing that makes it most difficult for teens to reach out and discuss their issues is the anxiety of what people will think of them. For this, I propose more extracurricular activities centered on discussing mental illness. Much like how many schools have clubs for students in the LGBTQ+ community to connect and interact, schools could create clubs for students struggling with mental health problems to breathe and meet others dealing with the same thing. Not only that, but introducing trained peer counselors into meetings and outside of school could introduce teens to their classmates and make new friends, get help with their situations, and have people their age that they’re comfortable talking to in case they don’t want to see adult therapists.

But those are only ideas, for now. However, if we care about mental illness, if we care about the next generation, if we want a brighter future for all, then we must make our voices heard. And when they listen, I can fall asleep easier knowing that my contributions helped to save a kid’s life.

NIH recognizes these talented essay winners for their thoughtfulness and creativity in addressing youth mental health. These essays are written in the students' own words, are unedited, and do not necessarily represent the views of NIH, HHS, or the federal government.

Page updated September 20, 2022