Our Mission
As the Mental Health Awareness Club, we strive to bring awareness towards mental health and its stigmatization for the betterment of ourselves and the community through service, research, and word of mouth. Each month, we'll target a project relating to current events or holidays, such as Red Ribbon Week, throughout that month. We'll target several topics and their effects on mental health: sleep, social media, drug abuse, exercise, etc. While we're not here to serve as a therapy group, we want to bring light to the problems affecting people everywhere. Thank you so much for being a part of that.
Our projects will allow students to increase awareness about these critical topics by participating in community service projects, leadership roles, blogs, and research. Through these monthly-bimonthly projects, we plan to better the community and guide students to create healthy habits by having more involvement in their community and journaling about their experiences. Students can expand on this by becoming writers on a blog advocating for destigmatization and change. Our projects will give all students in our club the opportunity to refine their leadership skills. Our club will not have designated leadership roles throughout the year; these will change depending on the project, allowing each student to demonstrate their leadership skills. Each project will have set groups working to accomplish an overarching goal. Students will select these groups based on their passions and work towards leadership.
Why It's Important
Recently, mental health issues have become more prevalent, especially in our age group. Teenage depression, suicide, and general stress have been on the rise. Though modern technology has benefited us greatly, creations like social media have consequently warped our perception of reality. As a result, we have hunted false expectations for beauty, school, happiness, and even life, leading to a rise in addiction, anxiety, eating disorders, and a loss of identity. Fortunately, social media has also promoted the stigmatization of mental illness, which helps people find resources and groups to help them in large cities. However, while conversations about this topic are more acceptable, there is still stigma and lack of knowledge surrounding it, especially in rural communities where there tends to be a disparity in resources.
Our Community
Within our school, teachers and students have agreed that there is a lack of opportunities to raise mental health awareness. Our club is not a therapy group, and we plan to have measures in place to contact professionals when students may be a risk to themselves or others. Instead, we seek to better the community as a whole through missions such as providing support and motivation during our school during finals week: spreading the importance of good study and sleep habits, Red-Ribbon week: informing students about the effects of drugs, and the beginning of new semesters: creating a comfortable environment for people to meet friends.
In our community, we hope to expand our mission as well. This will consist of community service: in connection with local organizations as they share how their endeavors relate to mental illness, creating a healthier environment for our community, but our students also as participating in community service is clinically proven to make people happier. Additionally, we will run fundraisers for local organizations like the Fresh Air Home Orphanage and Shelter From the Rain providing support to single mothers and their children, and state-wide organizations striving to provide rural communities with the mental health resources they desperately need.
Community Service
As our students participate in community service, we will push them to learn about the organizations they’re volunteering for to show how they’re helping the community. Additionally, we will have students journal their experiences so we can then write about the organizations in a blog connected to our website. Through this blog, we will be able to spread awareness of the organizations, mental health, and the effects volunteering has on our students.
Fundraising
Our main goal through our fundraisers is to provide more mental health resources to our own and surrounding communities. Our fundraisers will have set goals, and once we meet those goals, a percentage of the proceeds received after that goal will be donated to the club. We will host fundraisers on our Instagram page, website, and coffee houses hosted in the school, where professional speakers will discuss mental health and the substance of the fundraiser. Proceeds directly for the club will be received through our website, Instagram page, and schoolwide events like Candy Grams during Valentine's, Halloween, and the holiday season.
The Blog
The blog will be open to all members, allowing them to publish their material (this includes writing, photography, art, and more) on top of what the club will publish regarding our monthly projects. We strive to promote creativity among our members, and we'll create dedicated Instagram pages to promote work you'd like to share. However, there will be an approval process starting with the presidents and then moving to our sponsor; we will make this as quick and easy as possible. Throughout our projects we'd love to see members journal about their experiences so that could be shared later.
Personal Statements
Although it's not the critical crisis this club will target, there is a massive loss of identity across the rapidly developing world. We have championed independence, naming it king and forgetting about the people around us. We need to reestablish community while maintaining that sense of autonomy. That's why I find it so significant for our students to weave together a community through awareness of grave problems with the meticulous skills they're passionate about. This club will make students aware of their community, mental health, and themselves.
- Antonio (Tony) Bolea
Within our school community, there is a lack of opportunities for students to fight stigma and misknowledge regarding mental health that other schools in the nation have started to expand on. The importance of these opportunities only grows as mental health becomes more of a prevalent issue within our youth and can fight stigma and misknowledge regarding mental health. Many teachers and students agree that RHHS needs to put more effort into promoting mental health awareness. As mental health discussions become increasingly essential, and more people call for change, the need for the Mental Health Awareness Club grows. By having this club, students will improve their own mental health and others’ through learning more and spreading knowledge.
- Audrey Garlick