Mental Health in Schools
Prioritizing Mental Health After Tragedy with a School-Wide Mental Health Field Day: From the Advisors
From the advisors (school counselors): Kaitlyn Robichaud and Courtney Selig This blog was written by Whitman-Hanson Regional High School’s Active Minds advisors about their experience supporting student-led efforts to advance mental health in their community. This is the second of two pieces sharing the story of these students’ advocacy. To read about this journey/story from…
Prioritizing Mental Health After Tragedy with a School-Wide Mental Health Field Day: From the Students
From the students (officers): Aliyah Chapman, Liz Kowlski, Rylee McTernan, Morin Yacoub, and Maren Bowmen This blog was written by student leaders at Whitman-Hanson Regional High School about their experiences advancing mental health in their community. This is the first of two pieces sharing the story of these students’ advocacy. To read about this journey/story…
Why Mental Health Must Be Part of Your School’s Launch Plan
As a former educator on the south side of Chicago, I know firsthand the excitement and challenges of launching a new school year. The start of the school year sets the tone for what’s to come. We plan everything—the schedules, the curricula, the safety drills—but too often, mental health programming gets overlooked. And in today’s…
Former Active Minds Mental Health Advocacy Academy students reflect on their experiences
The Active Minds Mental Health Advocacy (Academy) is a leadership development and mental health advocacy program that equips BIPOC and LGBTQ+ high school students to address mental health-related issues and affect change in their schools, communities, and states. Recently, four alumni from the Active Minds Mental Health Advocacy Academy told us about their experiences and…
Send Silence Packing: Stories of Loss, Survival and Resilience
Understanding Suicide Prevention Awareness Month Suicide Prevention Awareness Month takes place every September and is dedicated to raising awareness about suicide so that together we can take action and save lives. Every year 726,000 people die by suicide. Youth mental health continues to be one of the most pressing challenges of our time, with the…
Make Connections a Priority This School Year
It is officially the start of the new school year in our home. For me, the last few days have been packed with back-school-shopping for my new middle schooler, orchestra supplies, theater fundraisers, and monitoring my own mental health as a single parent during this time. For you, though, I imagine the back-to-school transition is…
Is Self-Care Selfish? Self-Centeredness vs. Selflessness in Mental Health
In life, we often find ourselves swaying to the rhythms of obligations, responsibilities, and the needs of others. Amidst all this, it’s easy to lose sight of the most essential melody: the tune of self-care and self-love. We tend to gravitate towards our daily obligations and responsibilities and repress the self-care necessary to allow us…
Simple Ways to Bring Mental Health Conversations to Your School This Year
For many of us, mental health has become intertwined into our everyday conversations — chatting with our friends about daily stressors, reading social media posts about managing anxiety, and meeting with a therapist when things feel out of control. However, as commonplace as mental health can feel to some of us, that simply isn’t the…
The Role Youth and Young Adults Play in Mental Health Legislation
In 2020, the Arizona State Legislature passed Jake’s Law, a multi-faceted piece of legislation aimed at increasing access to behavioral health services (including mental healthcare) in schools, improving mental health parity in health insurance, and reevaluating the state of youth mental health in the state of Arizona. This included the establishment of an $8,000,000 fund…
Mental Health in Schools: How to Support Students AND Educators
As an educator in the classroom and a former principal on the South Side of Chicago, I’ve seen firsthand the challenges that students and staff alike face. American Education Week provides a crucial opportunity to shed light on an issue that continues to be ignored: the need to support the mental health of both students…
Active Minds is the largest nonprofit in the United States mobilizing youth and young adults to transform mental health norms across society.