On the evening of Thursday, November 3, Fossil Ridge High School hosted a district wide “Mental Health Matters” event to raise awareness of the presence of mental illness in Fort Collins, and the resources students have available to them for help. Just under 400 parents and students were in attendance from all across the district.

Mr. Allen believes very strongly in the meaning behind an event such as this. “I think sometimes people assume they’re in this by themselves or parents assume there aren’t others that they can lean on and turn to, and I think this is a great opportunity to find out who those people are. They can get contact information, phone numbers, emails, websites where they can go and get the help that they want.”

Mrs. Chaplain agreed with Mr. Allen, and further expanded on the relevance of mental health struggles in the halls of Fossil. “I think students face mental health issues everyday. I think it comes in the form of anxiety, it comes in the form of stress management, not just talking about having a diagnosed mental health disorder. It’s you own state of thinking and your perception of yourself…I think every student at some point have experienced anxiety that they just didn’t know how to handle whether it was self induced or from others or from classrooms.”

A parent of a student in the district shared that his wife suffers from depression. “There’s kind of some signs that my daughter might have it as well. We saw the description of this and thought it’d be a good thing to come to, because she’s still young, she’s only in second grade.”

Parents of students of all ages were grateful to have this resource to provide help to their children. Another parent said, “I think it’s nice that they’re seeing the need of mental health in the district and providing services to anyone who’s interested.”