On February 1st, 2023, our group met with Rebecca Benghiat, who is the president and CEO of the JED Foundation. In our interview she told us about the history of the JED foundation, and how it was founded after the founders’ son died by suicide because he was struggling with learning disorders and other mental health issues, and didn’t have access to the care that he needed. The JED foundation was founded to help schools think about what kind of systems they can put in place to help kids who are struggling. This stood out to me because our school has a lot of ways to help, like Ty, our school psychologist. Rebecca went to law school to get the practice, and during her time there she started a non-profit in reproductive health, which led her to her passion for mental health, and to work at the JED foundation.

She told us about how the JED foundation works with companies like Netflix, Disney, Hulu, so that younger people can see things that they can relate to. She talked to us about how they help schools by examining there policies, the paperwork that helps them deal with students who are struggling with mental health, they survey students, and teachers. And then they analyze all of that information, and then make recommendations. They also help the schools to find the help that they need. She also told us about how in times like with COVID the suicide rates go down because people are more focused about short term like how am i safe today, but then when things calm down rates sky rocket because the problem comes back to the front of your mind again. This shocked me because personally COVID is for the most part what made me realize that I was struggling with mental health issues. But I guess it would be different for people who already knew they were struggling before.

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On February 2, 2023, we visited the Paley Center for Media and took an interactive class with the Women’s Representation in the Media group. The class was called “Girls, Body Image, and the Media.” We started off the class by talking about the age that girls start to notice beauty standards. I personally was shocked to realize that it was really young. As we were talking about it I realized that girls as young as 6-7 or even younger notice it. I realized that for me I probably started to notice it around 6, because as a kid I loved shows and movies with princesses, so that was registering in my brain as the image of beautiful. Especially things like earlier Disney fairy tales like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, where there is a beautiful girl who has a prince come and rescue her because she can’t rescue herself.

After this conversation we watched clips from movies and TV shows and looked into the ways that they reflected women. In most of the clips it showed the girls talking about how they needed to change themselves in order to get a boy to like them. They talked about things like make-up, losing weight, even as far as plastic surgery. This struck me because of how far they were taking things. Especially when they were trying to lose weight, they took it so far that it wasn’t even healthy anymore.

Everything that we saw and talked about really struck me and made me think. Especially now with social media, these unrealistic beauty standards for women are just flat out unhealthy. It’s also almost the only way that you see women depicted. On social media you won’t get popular unless people like your video’s, and the things people like have all of these unrealistic standards woven in, and because people like this more and more girls are seeing this, causing them to feel self conscious about themselves.

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On Friday January 20th, 2023, we had the opportunity to have an interview with Ty, Joanne, and Andy. They told us about how they got to where they are today, and many other interesting facts about mental health, and things LREI is doing to help kids who struggle with mental health issues.

Something that I learned and thought was really interesting from our conversation was how many different things can cause you to be tired. For example stress, if you are stressed even when you sleep a lot you will not be rested, in fact the stress causes you to be more tired. So physically you are extremely well rested, but emotionally and mentally you could be exhausted. This seemed especially important to me because a lot of adults tell me that I need to sleep more and that’s why I am always so tired. but in reality the amount I stress (and I stress a lot) is just tiring me out.

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On Friday January 20th, 2023, our group had the privilage to do a zoom meeting with Ellen Klety.

Ellen Kelty is the Director of Mental Health and Student Safety. She has also worked as a school psychologist for 23 years. In our interview she talked about why she decided to become a school psychologist, and her experience being one, she also told us about some of the the issues she specializes in.

Something that learned from our conversation with her was how many things school psychologists do, she told us that she works with kids, like in classes, she does suicide prevention work, she does counseling, and things like art therapy, and play board games with the kids to make them feel more comfortable. I also thought it was interesting that she told us that the also told us that the hardest part of her job was the secondary trauma, which is when the work she does starts to affect her.

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