Me and my group went to Weill Cornell to watch a conference Led By Shannon M Bennett. The start of conference was mostly information about the Cornell Youth Mental Health workplace and goals. That did help let us know that this conference would be showing ages from 13-28.

As the conference kept going I got the names of a lot of doctors, that would be great for interviewing. In the conference I got to know more about the brain development in teens. This made a lot of sense to me as it connected to what we are learning in choices. The conference was also easily understood because of the amount of graphs. It showed us a example of what we could use in our presentation.

It was also interesting to me that mostly doctors were the ones who attended this talk. Overall, this conference was very helpful. I took a lot of notes and can’t wait to write about our interview with Shannon M. Bennett next!

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We met with Ever Ramirez, our school counselor. During this interview we got the chance to know him better as a person and get to know our topic better. For example, we asked him what he thinks is a main cause of the rise in mental health. He stated that now awareness for mental health has risen. The rise in awareness has now resulted in more cases of mental health illnesses being found. It could also be how our world is getting very complicated at the moment.

Another thing we asked was, how does social media affect mental health? His answer was that though there isn’t much harm in it, if you spend too much time on it, it can. He also mentioned that on social media cyber bullying can come up a lot. People might feel less shame commenting online rather than saying it to a person’s face. If you do get cyber bullied it can lower your self esteem. Overall, this interview was very helpful and I am so grateful we got to interview Ever Ramirez.

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I listened to a podcast where Shannon M. Bennet was being interviewed these are the most interesting notes/facts I learned from it
In 2021 42% of HS students reported feeling persistent feelings of sadness. To avoid and withdraw is a sign of mental health troubles. Depression changes energy levels. Parents try to protect their children when they see their child scared. We all experience feeling in different ways. Social media link – connection between using social media and mental health issues.
Whatever is important to you, you will always see someone doing it better or differently than you and then you feel bad about yourself. Passive scrolling can be a way to avoid and also when passive scrolling you see those people doing things you like better than you do. People say things online that they wouldn’t say in person.
Climate change can also affect people’s lives because knowing our planet is in peril is hard. We can’t predict what our generation will go through trying to undo the wrongs of the past. How to talk to others with Self Harm and Suicide parental point of view – talk to mental health doctor, going to ER treating it like the emergency it is.
Early 20s hard b/c of financial trouble and pressure to get a job.
It’s not just enough to manage symptoms, we have to get kids back on track.

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The interview went amazing. Although we changed our topic a bit beforehand Victoria took charge of questions. We drafted a couple questions in the cafeteria then headed over to her office and waited outside. We asked her if we could record and she said yes than we asked her our questions.

She never answered our questions with a simple yes or no always going into detail. 8 questions took 20 minutes! In which she also showed us this book about mental health and 30 minutes later we emailed him. Thank you Allison.

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We walked into Ever’s office and he greeted us warmly. Immediately we were greeted with open arms and we jumped right in asking “What is your experience with individuals living with mental illnesses?” he answered and his answer segwayed into our next question and the flow of the interview.

One big takeaway I had was that change comes from the person. Almost like the saying “you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.” I think that is a very life lesson because people can’t do everything for you all the time and they can help but you need to help yourself as well.

In the end, he made a topic very challenging to talk about, not as sad as I was prepared for even cracking some jokes now and again and made the interview really engaging. I can’t thank him enough. I would recommend as an interview!

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Walter and I first walked into the room, which felt very welcoming. We first sat down and pressed record. Using the prepared questions it felt easier to be able to listen to Allison and gather information. I found it really interesting how social media came up a lot during the conversation. It made me think on my own how social media may actually be a rising factor in mental illnesses such as depression. It has already been shown how seeing a friend on the phone versus in person is very different.

When we asked Allison about how COVID impacted our topic it started making a lot of sense how mental illnesses uprised during that time. To the fact a lot of people felt lonely, which was understandable because at that point children didn’t even have the chance to be social at school. I really enjoyed and appreciated this interview as it was very helpful and Allison even recommended another person to the interview! He’s a professor and author named Jonathan Haidt which will hopefully be another interview coming soon!

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