How Writing ‘Letters to Strangers’ Helps Students Who Need Mental Health Support
For an adolescent battling psychological well being, what sort of distinction would it not make to know they aren’t alone? To know that another person at college feels the identical loneliness or heartache or has the identical issues at dwelling?
In Diana Chao’s case, it turned out to be lifesaving. At 14 years outdated, she put all of her ache into letters addressed to nobody specifically — pouring out the sentiments that led her to try to finish her personal life. When she re-read the letters shortly after, she was struck by an epiphany.
“I realized I was trying very hard to be the listener and empathetic stranger that I wanted in my life,” Chao, now 24, says. “That led me to get on my healing journey.”
As a highschool scholar, she based the primary chapter of Letters to Strangers, a nonprofit, youth-led group the place college students shared nameless letters about their psychological well being struggles and located camaraderie and assist.
Ten years later, the group has grown to over 100 scholar chapters in 20 international locations, together with new chapters this 12 months in Kenya and Rwanda. Depending on their pursuits, Chao says, the student-led chapters would possibly alternate letters primarily based on a theme, concentrate on schooling round psychological well being, or take part in advocacy for psychological well being sources at their colleges.
Some letters supply a pep talk to college students who really feel strain to have life discovered: “There will be obstacles thrown at us, and maybe we don’t get to slay the fire breathing dragon or kiss prince charming, but frankly we are pretty damn awesome.”
Others are extra philosophical, like this writer who shares their ideas about loneliness: “How many times do we say hello in a lifetime? How many times do we pretend not to see the other person? To avoid awkward conversations? Let’s slow down a bit.”
In a time the place concern is rising over the psychological well being of younger folks — whether or not from the isolation of the pandemic or strain to carry out happiness on social media — Chao finds that the need amongst teenagers to join with their friends has held regular since her personal highschool days.
“One thing across our generations is people tend to feel like, ‘Parents don’t understand me’, and you sort of have inherent trust in someone your own age,” Chao says.
Overcoming Stigma
Chao was 13 years outdated when she was identified with bipolar dysfunction and uveitis, a situation that causes periodic blindness.
Getting psychological well being therapy wasn’t an choice, she says. Chao’s household immigrated to California from China when she was 9 years outdated, they usually confronted monetary and language limitations to discovering her care.
“I was trying to figure out a way to heal in a health care system that my family could not afford, and was linguistically unable to participate in,” she says.
After beginning the primary chapter of Letters to Strangers at 14, Chao says it grew by word-of-mouth when college students from different colleges heard in regards to the membership and wished to begin their very own chapters.
The reactions to the idea had been combined, Chao remembers. After a classmate died by suicide, the Letters to Strangers group at her faculty wrote nameless letters of assist and dropped them in college students’ lockers. Chao says she cried after seeing one scholar tear up the letter left for him. But one other scholar thanked her.
“I did end up getting a call from someone, and to this day I don’t know who it is, but they said that the letter they got saved their life,” she remembers.
While Letters to Strangers’ mission is to assist finish the stigma round psychological well being, Chao says she was deeply ashamed of her personal analysis and struggles when she was in highschool. She didn’t point out the membership on her faculty purposes, fearing she could be seen as a “liability” by whomever learn them.
“I told a handful of people about my diagnosis and hid Letters to Strangers as an education club,” Chao says of the time.
She determined to communicate brazenly about her psychological well being struggles for the primary time in 2018 in an especially public manner — throughout a TEDx occasion for teen innovators. Her discuss has been viewed online over 10,000 times. That’s when the group noticed an enormous spike in curiosity.
“I got this unbelievable response, especially from people who said they saw someone who wasn’t white — an immigrant like them, under the poverty line like them — recognizing and talking about mental health without seemingly being that ashamed of it,” Chao says, “and realizing that maybe there is some merit to caring about this stuff.”
Making an Impact
Today, Chao is a local weather scientist by day and govt director of Letters to Strangers by evening. In some methods, the group has grown proper alongside her.
It gives scholarships for each college students who plan to pursue a profession in psychological well being and for college kids who need assistance paying for psychological well being therapy. It has printed a psychological well being guidebook for younger folks and a separate curriculum for academics.
Dan Kanceljak, the Letters to Strangers chief outreach director, says the peer-to-peer networks supplied by every chapter not solely break down monetary limitations that members would possibly face in getting psychological well being assist but in addition goal to chip away on the stigma round asking for assist.
“We were born to connect, and the more we can acknowledge our own humanity, the more we acknowledge the humanity of everyone else,” he says. “It’s OK to be a work in progress as much as anyone else.”
A key distinction that has emerged for the reason that group was based is that members of Gen Z, and kids even youthful, who battle with physique picture points now have to take care of requirements set by social media, like using image-perfecting photograph filters. There’s been a “trend-ification” of psychological well being points on social media, too, Chao says, the place some folks view psychological well being problems extra as attention-grabbing character traits as an alternative of circumstances that may be difficult to stay with.
“I had a high school student come up to me after a talk and say, ‘You must feel so lucky to have bipolar disorder,’” Chao says. “Because depression and anxiety — everyone has them. Now, it’s not ‘cool’ anymore.”
While some adults could assume that trendy teenagers are extra open and educated about psychological well being and the way to get assist, Chao says that’s a false impression.
“If you think about it, where you have your understanding of mental health, most likely it comes from the media you’ve ingested — from movies or articles — but not from a psychologist,” she says. “It’s the same with Gen Z and younger folks; that doesn’t mean exposure is in terms of correct information or nuanced information.”
