Mental Health Brings Wealth

Today was a very interesting day. Woke up this morning and I don’t know what we was gonna do. We ended up going to this college, called Saint Xavier‘s. At this college we met up with a very nice psychologist, who recently graduated from college. Apparently she has been working so hard for a long time now, and today she was educating us about the importance of mental health. Throughout the session we did various activities on motivated by a price/point system. In the end my team came in second place so we didn’t get out of there, but it was really fun activities we did.

One of the activities we did was we had to take care of a balloon and make sure he didn’t pop the whole class. That was really hard, but my balloon was very small so it was easy to manage. I ended up being able to take care of my balloon throughout the whole class, but I gave mine blowing to the teacher and she ended up popping it on accident. Which I found very funny.

Another activity we did was a communal share out of a particular event that had impacted us in our lives. We had already established the rule of a safe space, which means everything in the room stays in the room and people can share out really without being judged. Everybody ended up sharing out very sensitive stories, which really made the session more meaningful and impactful. I felt very comfortable with the group after the stories that we shared and I appreciate it the vulnerability that everybody showed.

By the end of this session I have learned the difference between mental health and it’s common counterpart mental illness. I also learned how important it is for people to take care of their mental health and to get help for their mental illnesses if they have any. In the future I hope to establish in my community a place where people can go and discuss their mental health, as well as change the stigma surrounding mental health. It is very common in the United States that people have mental illnesses, and are often criticized or singled out for it. I want to change that mindset of people in the United States from swerving away from those who have mental illnesses to taking the time to understand and help them navigate their mental illness. I really enjoyed today’s session and I look forward to the future ones.