When my peers see me, they see an outgoing, confident, obnoxious girl. They see me laughing with my friends and cracking jokes in class. They see a girl who loves to talk in front of crowds and always surrounds herself with people. A girl who loves people. A girl who’s happy. I don’t want to say this isn’t the case, because I am a very extroverted person. However, my peers don’t know the full truth about me.

When I began this article, I planned to find dozens of students with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder- any mental illness affecting a student’s ability to perform, and learn about the inner workings of their minds. I wanted to see how students struggling with mental illness viewed the world. However, I quickly discovered two things: It’s very difficult to recognize a person with mental illness on the surface, and once you have, it’s nearly impossible to get them to talk about it. That’s when I decided to smash the stigma around mental illness.

“When I think about Fossil kids, especially after the last three or four years I think there’s been an explosion in anxiety and depression. I think a lot of kids have diagnosis of anxiety or depression and it really does affect their ability to focus or do schoolwork, come to school, think about their future, all of that is kind of clouded when you have real serious illnesses,” said school psychiatrist Brittany Hutson, “and I’m sure there’s students out there that we don’t even know about.”

I believe that my generation has it in them to show the world the hardship they’ve been through, and if that must start with me, so be it. I was formally diagnosed with depression in middle school, but I’ve struggled with it for as long as I can remember. In the fall of 2016, my sophomore year, I spent a week in a mental hospital after my third time reaching the point where suicide seemed like the only option. Among other things, I learned that the key to being okay with my illness was to stop hiding it. I had magnified the stigma to the point where I was terrified of what people would think of me. I never wanted to be perceived as the sort of person who wallows in self pity and sadness. I enjoy being seen as that happy, approachable person that I was, and I was hesitant to get help because of that.

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, one in five adults have experienced a mental health issue within their lifetime, one in ten young adults will experience a period of major depression, and one in twenty five Americans live with a serious mental illness.

Freshman counselor Nicholas Peterson disclosed that Fossil has, “a large amount [of students] that are mentally unwell, maybe 30%. In my freshman intake meetings of 250 kids, about 70% have disclosed that they experience feelings of anxiety and a fewer number, maybe 20% say they experience feelings of depression.”

So why, if mental illness is so widespread, is it such a taboo subject? What have we done as a society to create this stigma that affects so many people across the country so deeply? School Mental Health Specialist Lisa Cole reasoned, “people don’t want to believe that it’s happening in their families, they don’t believe it exists or they think they can fix it themselves instead of seeking out professional help. There’s a lot of pressure on kids to succeed and mental illness can get in the way of that.”

It can be difficult to imagine someone you love dealing with such an intense issue. Knowing that they, at times, have a hard time controlling the very thoughts in their head is scary. But I guarantee you it is scarier to be incapable of controlling your own thoughts. When a family shuts out their child because they are in denial, it closes the door that took that child so much strength to open.

This feeling of unimportance springs from a much larger mentality than a denial within the family. Cole shared, “There’s a lack of funding for mental health services, it’s not a huge priority anymore. When we put it lower on the list of priorities, and you cut funding and shut beds down and shut hospitals down, you are sending out the message that it is not an important issue to talk about. I think that creates the stigma.”

This stigma that exists around mental illness is way more of an issue than many may expect. It creates a mold that certain issues are meant to fill, even when that person is nothing like that. If you’re bipolar, you’re crazy rude to people who were your best friends the day before. If you’re anxious, you’re quiet, hard to talk to, and boring. And if you’re depressed, you’re pessimistic about the world and bring everyone around you down.

But here’s the thing. Nobody is their illness, they have it. “Mental health doesn’t define you. More and more people have had issues at some point in their life where it’s chronic and they’ve dealt with it and it’s being okay with it, saying ‘it’s okay,’” said Cole. No person is going to fit into that cookie cutter shape of someone with their illness, even when they have it. I’ve been incredibly depressed a good amount of my life and last year I was on homecoming court and won Freshman Female of the Year. We all have our own struggles, it’s only a matter of being okay with it, and making your peace.

No person should be in this alone. Everyone deserves to have people behind them cheering for them in every single thing they do. So how do you approach mental illness? “It’s talking about it, it’s being okay to talk about it, it’s reaching out to people who you’re worried about and letting them know where they can get help and who they can talk to, it’s encouraging them to talk to adults. It’s better to get your friend some support than to leave your friend in that misery because you feel you’re being an unfaithful friend. If you’re concerned about somebody, it’s important to go with them or to seek out help for that person. It’s not being disloyal, it’s being a good friend.

In school, Hutson believes, “teachers could be more aware of the signs and symptoms and maybe not just assume that a student is just lazy or doesn’t come to class. There might be something going on deeper and they might be able to look into that and let the student know that they are here to support them and that they want the student to come to class and they miss them when they’re gone, those kinds of things would help students feel more connected.”

Students and teachers can definitely help within the Fossil community, but why stop there? Together, we can transform the way society views and approaches mental illness. Peterson said, “I think the thing that would solve most problems in the world, including this, is empathy towards other people. Understanding what it’s like to walk in their shoes, understanding what their life experiences are like. Taking a moment to contemplate the perspectives and just the existence of other people.”

This is the beginning of the end of the stigma. My generation will be the last to know the helpless fear of being utterly alone in the battle against mental illness.This is my dream, and I will not rest until I’ve achieved it. I reached the point where I was forced to make the hardest decision of my life. I stood at the fork between death and getting help, terrified. If I knew my peers wouldn’t judge me for having depression and assume I was going to bring them down, it would’ve been an easy choice. But the stigma wailed in the back of my mind and almost pushed me over the edge. I’m thankful everyday that it didn’t, and I never want another person to reach the fork again. I’m still here. You can make it through this.