Student Stories
Mental Health in My Hispanic Home: Breaking Generational Cycles
Imagine coming home to your mom and asking her to do something you know she would never let you do, but you still ask. You feel that knot in your stomach, and your voice starts to quiver. Growing up, this is how I – and many other Hispanic children and young adults I knew –…
Claiming Space: Mental Health in the Bisexual Community
Content Warning: This piece contains mentions of suicidal ideation, religious trauma, and homophobia. I noticed from a young age that I was interested in both sexes. As a kid, I went to a private Catholic school from kindergarten through fifth grade before then attending a public middle school. I remember being preached to in second…
My Experience as an Emerging Scholar: BIPOC Veterans and Mental Health
Content Warning: This piece contains mentions of suicide statistics. As a child growing up in India, I always considered my family my number one support system. I never realized that I needed more than they were capable of providing until I was in crisis. My mental health became increasingly complicated as I entered my teenage…
My Experience as an Emerging Scholar: Mental Health in My Community
Coming from a family that always emphasized the importance of social justice, I have always been interested in finding ways to give back to my community. After years of living and working abroad, I found my way home to my native Chicago to reconnect not only with my family but with my community. Chicago is…
Taking Pride in My Intersectional Identity and the Power It Gives Me
Throughout my life, I resided in many multi-cultural, under-resourced, and impoverished communities that exposed me to a multitude of systemic inequities that impacted my family and friends’ well-being and mental health. I too faced those inequities as a queer Latiné, and as I learned more about the systems in place that upheld those barriers, I…
Ending the Stigma Around Men’s Mental Health as a Transgender Man
Content Warning: This piece contains mentions of suicide statistics. Being perceived as less of a man when expressing emotion. Facing unrealistic stereotypes and expectations. Being made to feel like your mental health doesn’t matter, or that you can’t struggle with your feelings without being invalidated. As a transgender man, these are all experiences I’ve dealt…
Reflections from an Active Minds Graduate on the Importance of Mental Health in College Culture
Content Warning: This piece contains mentions of suicide. As a high schooler, I convinced myself that starting college would be the fresh start I was looking for. I was certainly ready for one. So as I sat on the long drive to Eastern Michigan University (EMU) I looked through lists of student clubs, envisioning what…
A Decade-Long Search for a Diagnosis: The Importance of Self-Advocacy in Health
“I was wrong,” is not something I ever expected to hear my therapist say. However, I had heard it more than once from different medical professionals over the years, all relating to one persistent question: “Do I have autism?” Throughout these various appointments and confessions, I remained without an answer. I went years without knowing,…
Protecting My Mental Health During an Ethnic Identity Crisis
One of my first extracurricular experiences in college was attempting to join the Filipino Student Association (FSA) at the beginning of my freshmen fall semester. While I could say it was a memorable experience, it’s more accurate for me to describe it as an infamous memory amongst many others that defined my college life. I…
I’m the First in My Family To Go to Therapy – And It Changed My Life
I’m going to be honest – I didn’t enjoy my first therapy session. I was 14. Growing up, I saw therapy as something people do when there is something “wrong” with them. They’d sit in a room, maybe on a long couch, and talk about their feelings for an hour before leaving and going on…
Active Minds is the nation’s leading nonprofit organization promoting mental health awareness and education for young adults.