Combating Mental Illness

Mental illness is a problem that many people struggle to face. Based on our survey of 324 high schools students, 87.3% of them said they have or they know someone who has a mental illness. Over half of the responses said that they couldn’t find help and that they didn’t know where to go. Almost half said that they could not get help due to financial limitations. From this, we drew two main problems: People can’t get help for mental illness due to lack of money, and lack of accessibility. The goal of our organization is to help these people. This problem is not just found in high schoolers. In areas of low economic status, people with mental illness find it hard to afford the help they need for their mental illness while attempting to sustain themselves and their families. Our organization will work with counselors in schools, and other organizations that work with mental illness to create a method of helping people with mental illness. We will also work to redefine what constitutes a mental illness by erasing the stigma surrounding it, and providing a true definition of what it means and feels like to have a mental illness. We will work with organizations to help support the people in low economic areas so that the can pay for the medication, therapy, or whatever type of remedy they need for mental illness. Sometimes, all they need is someone to talk to, so our organization will work to give people who are struggling with a mental illness, a sort of advocate, someone that they can talk to and trust