Special feature: Meha's story

I know as a teenager during this pandemic the state of your mental health may not be what it used to be. I work with a community services club (San Ramon Valley Community Interact Club) and we are all teenagers from grades 6-12. We all understand how hard this time can be for people. Talking about ways you can cope with these different mental issues and instead of telling people to call a hotline we connect them with people who have gone through the same thing they are is important. A lot of people did not deal with these kinds of issues before but the pandemic has brought them out and many people are struggling and don't know how to get help or where to get help. A lot of people are also scared to talk about it. They are afraid of what people would say about them if they knew. The biggest mistake many people make is that they confide in people who don’t understand any of this and then those people think they are faking this or something, leave them and make the person feel awful. Many people are afraid of that happening. Fighting for Hope connects people who have/are dealing with the same things because they understand what they are going through and won’t assume things and won’t leave them and won’t hurt them. Nobody goes through the exact same stuff when it comes to mental health but we try to connect people with other people who have similar problems or similar feelings. Some types of mental health problems/mental illnesses include Depression, Bipolar disorder, Eating disorders, and Anxiety. This is not even close to all the different forms of mental illnesses out there. There are many kinds and they all affect different people in different ways. Just because one person is affected by it in a certain way doesn’t mean everyone is affected that way. Mental illness is not a joke and is not something to be joked around about. It's a serious issue that millions of people go through and it is not okay for people to assume things and to make jokes out of it. Mental health has a huge impact not only on the person but on everyone around them such as their friends and family. It can sometimes cause a lot of stress for the parents and their close friends because they want what is best for the person and don’t want the person to harm themselves or harm others because of their illness. Mental health isn’t something to be taken lightly either. During this shelter in place, many people have been unable to meet or in some cases even talk to the people they loved. This can cause immense amounts of stress and anxiety especially if you have an older family member in another country or a family member in the hospital. If you are going through something like this instead of keeping everything bottled up and hurting yourself more, talk to someone. It can help if you talk to your family around you or a close friend which can help take the stress off of yourself and you never know they could be going through the same thing and just never talked about it which can help both of you feel less alone.  If you know somebody with a mental illness don’t ignore them when they aren’t feeling okay or joke about their illness. Be there for them, be the person they can confide in, the person they can trust, and the person they know will always be there for them no matter what. 

Meha