In my questioning of Temple students, I found that the ones that were interviewed all thought there needed to be a bigger emphasis on mental health in the media. However, they all agreed that while it’s making progress we really aren’t there yet as a nation. 

I posed the question to Jeet Gandhi, a freshman finance major, on whether mental health is being portrayed well in the media and he stated: “No, although it’s trending in the right direction I think there’s a lot of improvement that needs to be done in terms of representation of mental health issues.” I agree with this statement, as a society in general, it’s like we know these occurrences are a big deal, but we don’t know how to discuss them so they are kind of pushed to the side. 

Now you may be wondering, how do we change this? Can this be changed in the current state of media where they promote mostly negative headlines and are driven by views? I believe that there can be improvements made and so do my colleagues. I asked the question of whether mental health should be taught more in the education system. Adam Ziv, a freshman in the Fox School of Business, gave me his outlook stating: “I think it should because it might be able to help people who end up having mental health problems and make them know more about it and maybe even help prevent some things and help it be better.” His roommate, a man of few words, Pranav Maneel, also went along to say: “Yeah, I think kids should be taught how to deal with problems without stress and create alternatives to anger and depression.” 

This quote, albeit short, made me think particularly about the second half of his quote. Creating alternatives to anger and depression? How can we do that exactly? I thought of advice I gave in the earlier class on distracting yourself in terms of letting things go. I figured they correlated in doing activities you enjoy and being able to become more calm and relaxed. So my follow-up to this was what kind of events that when you take part in or complete them can be therapeutic for you, be it a hobby or something to that effect? The answers ranged from exercising, such as a favorite sport to get there mind off of stuff, or an activity they just love doing such as driving on a highway listening to music or just hanging and talking with your friends. 

I think that this shows that education can possibly focus a little more on the freedom of the student. Not having them focus on memorizing monotonous stuff and focus more on themselves and things that will happen in life. The question is how can we make these changes, and to be completely honest I’m not sure. My best guess and hope is that with time things will gradually change as my generation has put more of an emphasis on mental health. 

The picture I included was from my apartment with a basketball present and a court on top of an elementary school in the background. Personally, basketball is very therapeutic and when I play I can just focus on that rather than any other problem I’m having.