New club Active Minds made its presence known through a series of motivational posters pinned up around the school. Junior Laura Goldberg founded Active Minds with the intention that it be a club that brings to light the issue of mental health, specifically the cases that are most prevalent in high schoolers.
Goldberg viewed the club’s poster campaign as a way to start a conversation about mental health.
“We made posters with phrases that we got from the Active Minds organization,” Goldberg said. “We did this because the first step to promoting awareness about mental health issues is to actually talk about it.”
Along with hanging up posters this year, Active Minds plans to involve their club more in the community, including working with the Senior Mentor program to offer help and support to freshmen who have a difficult time with the transition to high school.
Goldberg was first inspired to create this club after working on a show with a community theater in Maryland which dealt with mental health issues.
“In preparation for the show, representatives from a college chapter of Active Minds in Maryland came and helped us learn a lot about mental health,” Goldberg said. “So I thought since kids go through so much in high school which isn’t always recognized. I would be the person who would try and recognize these difficulties, which led me to starting an Active Minds chapter.”
Others, like sophomore Stephen Underwood, joined the club because they felt the same urge to get a discussion about mental health out into the open.
“I joined Active Minds because discussion of mental health and the concept of mental diseases has become way too stigmatized in our society,” Underwood said. “Active Minds is important since it provides that forum, a place where people can talk about any aspect of their mental health without fear of judgement.”