On February 2nd, my group had the opportunity to join the Women’s Representation in the Media group for a workshop led by the Paley Center for Media. This is an institution that promotes safety in using the media and how best to navigate it. We were shown a series of clips from old shows, music videos, and movies, that showed mainly how women were portrayed in the media. This was extremely fascinating and taught me about how deeply rooted many of these stereotypes are. In addition to this, the woman leading the discussion gave us a brief overview on how these exaggerations promote bad body image which can lead to eating disorders. It taught me about how a show that might not have a necessary malicious intent can still have an extremely detrimental impact on young teens.

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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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My group and I met with Rebecca Benghiat, who is the President and CEO of the JED Foundation. The JED Foundation is a mental health organization that provides support and suicide prevention resources focused towards teens and young adults. During our meeting with Rebecca, she explained to us what exactly the foundation does and what their main priorities are. She was extremely thorough with her answers which gave us a lot of information in relation to our topic.
Rebecca explained the origin of the foundation to us, which was a very heartbreaking story about a suicide involving a loved one that inspired the founders to provide support to others around them struggling. We learned about the crisis of mental health in teens, which Rebecca explained to us using details about their research and resources that they provide to help those struggling, such as new workshops that try to make it easier for teens to talk about their mental health. Her story was extremely fascinating to hear about, especially how passionate she was about her job and the work that she does. Overall, this interview was extremely informational and taught us a lot about the mental health crisis in teens and how best to help those around you who are struggling.

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On February 2, 2023, we were lucky enough to visit the Paley Center for Media to take an interactive class alongside the Women’s Representation in the Media group. The class was called “Girls, Body Image, and the Media.” We got to look at and compare movie clips, TV show clips, and music videos from across many decades, and see how women and body image ideas were portrayed. This was super eye opening to how young teen girls may see themselves in/based on the media, and how that might effect their mental health. An example of this may be them seeing diet culture portrayed in the media from a young age, potentially resulting in disordered eating. That was probably my biggest take-away, because I pretty much knew that but actually getting even more information and getting to see that in action through real clips from media was super eye-opening. We also learned so much about the sexualization of women in the media, which isn’t directly connected to mental health, but I suppose it could be.

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On February 1, 2023, we had the pleasure to sit down with Rebecca Benghiat, the President and CEO of the JED Foundation. She told us all about her job and her journey getting this job. She also told us more what the JED Foundation does. My biggest takeaway was probably learning about how roles in activism can come in unexpected way, after learning about her story.

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On January 20th, my group met with a mental health professional, Ellen Kelty, over Zoom interview. We asked her details about her job, what the hardest parts of it are, what she sees affect teens the most, and more. She was an extremely fascinating person to speak to and I learned a lot from this interview.
Ellen told us about how she speaks with many kids who have first-hand trauma, which really showed me how hard it is to work in this profession. She shared with us the tactics she uses to help kids who are struggling, and what she’d recommend to those with people around them who also need help. Additionally, she told us about many resources and organizations that she trusts and shares with her students, which all seem extremely interesting. She told us about the wide range of issues that she deals with, and how she is able to handle speaking to kids who struggle with extreme mental health issues. Her job and extensive knowledge of it told us a lot about how mental health presents itself in teens, and we look forward to hopefully reaching out and researching more of the organizations she told us about.

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On January 20th, me and my group met with Ty, Joanne, and Andy at the LREI High School. They are three of the psychologists at the LREI High School and Middle school. We spoke to them about their experience with how mental health presents itself in schools. We were curious about many things, such as how we can help those around us struggling with mental health, or what issues they see impact teens the most.
The discussion was extremely interesting and taught me a lot about how professionals handle adolescents who are struggling with their mental health. I learned more about how extremely common it is for teens to be dealing with these issues, and what resources our school provides for it. It was especially interesting to hear about the factors of mental health issues, such as lack of sleep and social media. I think that these are something that affects almost all teens and it really put it into perspective when we had professionals speak to us about it. In conclusion, this was a very informative interview that definitely shined light on the struggles that teens face in terms of their mental health.

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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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