Assembly Highlights Mental Health at Exeter
At assembly this past Friday, a brave group of Exonians shared their personal experiences with mental health and mental illness, hoping to foster a discussion and break down the stigmas surrounding the sensitive topics. Active Minds, an ESSO club focused on mental health issues within the Exeter community, organized the assembly. The club gathered a group of speakers with a variety of perspectives to show the community that these issues breach the “Exeter bubble” and pertain to all.
Exeter’s Active Minds club is one of only 19 high school chapters of the Active Minds non-profit organization, which primarily functions on college campuses. With 400 college campus based chapters, Active Minds has become a well-recognized and major force for mental health advocacy nationwide. At Exeter, Active Minds meets weekly to work toward changing the conversation about mental health. This fall, the club participated in a walk for Suicide Prevention and Awareness and, this winter, organized Post Secret, the notecard based project currently on display in Agora.
After witnessing the powerful effects of assemblies based on personal anecdotes, such as last years’ GSA assembly, the student members of the Active Minds club decided to host their own assembly in an effort to extend mental health discussions into the wider Exeter community.
When choosing which issues to be addressed in the assembly, the students of Active Minds did not want to focus on any possible flaws in the health center or the medical leave program at Exeter out of fear that a negative approach would deter people from getting help. Instead, they wanted to talk about mental health and mental illness in a broader context, displayed in a personalized medium.
“It was alarming to think that so many teenagers, especially here at Exeter, struggle with mental illness.”
Prep Arielle Lui spoke at assembly about mental illness in regards to her mother who suffers from bipolar disorder. Because of the stigma of mental health, Lui has often avoided the topic. “For most of my life, I felt ashamed and as though I had to hide the fact that mental illness affected my family. I don’t want kids here to feel like they have to hide that someone in their family is sick,” Lui said.
The assembly addressed the problem of the separation between being physically sick versus being mentally sick. Upper Kyra Citron, who spoke about her experience with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, wrote her speech because of the reaction she often receives in regards to the authenticity of her condition. “When I tell people I have OCD, they honestly don’t believe me or don’t think it is a serious disorder. Every disorder is serious,” Citron said.
Senior Zoe Meyer, who has experienced dealing with mental health on campus, agreed with the presence of this discrepancy. She recalled a night where she had been struggling with her anxiety and depression and had seeked help from the health center. The response she received was, “Well, are you actually sick or are you just sad?” Meyer said.
Meyer believes that the assembly’s emphasis on mental health as a “universal experience” that should be treated the same as physical health was beneficial in breaking down the fear of talking about mental health.
The personal stories shared during the assembly demonstrated the fact that nobody is alone and that the entire community deals with mental health.
Senior and club head of Active Minds Connor Bloom, who also spoke at assembly, said, “47 percent of this campus will experience a mental illness at some point. The fact that we either hide it or brush it off or don’t consider it important is a problem.”
Because of the nature of the Exeter community and the perpetuation of a negative connotation with mental illness, the conversation of mental health is often pushed under the rug.
“It is something that is so hard for us to talk about as Exonians, because we are so focused on being perfect and not showing weakness. We have this irrational fear of asking for help, especially from the health center,” Bloom said.
Meyer sees the reluctance for students to seek help from the health center as a result of the counselors having to balance the student with the community, which normal therapy doesn’t entail. “Counselors have to think about how the student has to interact with the community and often times that leads to a fear of medical leave or discipline,” Meyer said. She believes that this fear sustains the dangerous idea that admitting you have a problem is a failure.
Although it was difficult for the speakers to share such private stories about their lives, the potential impact on even one member of the audience was worth the fear of opening up to the entire school. The impact has been unexpectedly fast and responsive and has already started to change the dialogue, Bloom said. Many students and teachers have begun discussion in their classes, dorms and advisory groups. Lui said that she received a wide range of support after speaking at assembly, whether that was in the dining hall, on the path or through a Facebook message. Even if they didn’t know Lui personally, students have made the effort to encourage Lui and tell her that they relate. Counselor Jeanne Stern has also received immense amounts of feedback from students who were touched by the assembly.
Lower Antigone Clark believes that the medium of personal student stories was a great way to approach the discussion on mental health. “By having people from the Exeter community speak up, it shows that there is really no way to avoid the issue,” Clark said.
Prep Winslow Macdonald said that although he has known people who have suffered from mental illness, the assembly was still eye-opening. “It was alarming to think that so many teenagers, especially here at Exeter, struggle with mental illness,” Macdonald said.
Prep Evan Stanton was especially influenced by his dormmate Connor Bloom’s speech. “Hearing that he contemplated suicide was shocking. It’s too easy to think that mental health is only an issue for people born with serious disorders, but it’s something that can affect everyone. His speech was a reminder,” Stanton said.