The day that I am writing this essay is a very important one indeed. It is October 10th, 2021. Otherwise know as Mental Health Awareness Day. I cannot begin to express how important it is to me that society is taking steps to destigmatize the negative conceptions surrounding mental health and bringing awareness all around the world. What a fitting day to write this essay. I have suffered from anxiety and depression for a majority of my life. My struggles with mental health has caused my family and I to go through many dark times. Those dark times impacted me greatly and turned me into the person I am today. I'd say that everything I've gone through has impacted every single area of my life in some way. In terms of my relationships, my experiences with anxiety and depression has brought me closer to my friends and family. It taught me how to reach out when I feel like things are falling apart and helped me realize that I always have a support system behind me that I can depend on. It also helped me develop optimistic beliefs. Many times I found myself in a dark place that I thought I would never get out of. To my surprise, with a little time, love, and support, I was always able to pick myself back up again. Because of this, I have a much more optimistic outlook when I get knocked down. The biggest area that my struggles with mental health has impacted however, is my career aspirations. My dream career is to become a child psychologist because I want to help other people who are going through similar things. When I was twelve years old I made a promise to myself. At this time my anxiety and depression were becoming worse than they ever had been before and I felt hopeless and stuck. I knew that I never wanted anybody else to ever feel as alone as I did in that moment, so that's when I promised myself that I would do everything in my power to be an advocate for those who are struggling, which is where my dream to be a psychologist originated. Ever since that day, it is a goal that I have been continuously climbing towards. Mental health is important to me because it is so crucial to our lives and wellbeing. Mental health determines our behaviors, how we function, and our habits. I've experienced firsthand how struggles with mental health can quickly resort to a complete breakdown involving other aspects of our routine. In today's society struggles with mental health is skyrocketing, and it is not something that we can just brush aside.

One practical solution for helping more people who struggle with mental health is to create more of an outreach to extend help to individuals who are suffering. I know from experience that when people struggle with mental health it can be such a lonely and isolating time for them. It can feel like the weight of the entire world is on their shoulders and that they have to carry that burden alone. However, what people need to realize is that they don't have to go through their troubles alone. Getting professional help and seeking therapy was really a turn of the tide with my struggles with mental health and it really helped me with my state of mind. I believe that this could be the case for everyone if there were more people advocating for professional help and more therapists, psychiatrists, and social workers going out of their way to reach the people. Then the people who struggle with mental health would know that there are people who are willing to stick by them and that they don't have to feel all alone. Another practical solution for helping people who suffer with mental health is to destigmatize all the negative misconceptions around it. There are a lot of people who don't want to get professional help because society looks down upon it. I want to live in a world where this is no longer the case. If more people knew that it's okay and perfectly normal to struggle with mental health, the battle against it would be a lot easier to achieve. We need to completely eliminate that stigma if we want to see a change in how people view mental health as well as a change in how many people actually go and seek help for it.

In life, there are going to be setbacks and obstacles that we are going to have to overcome. This is something that applies to everybody, we are all going to face adversity in our lives, but it's not about falling down, it's about getting back up and making a change. Over the course of my life I have come across several obstacles that I have had to overcome. The most recent of these obstacles has been dealing with my mental health while also trying to pull myself through school and get good grades. All my life I have struggled with anxiety and depression. I have had my share of highs and lows dealing with all of this over the years and it has put me through some truly life-changing experiences that have shaped me into the person I am now. The most recent occurrence of one of these experiences happened two years ago, when I was just a sophomore. I was just starting to get used to high school life and I was optimistic about the upcoming year because I felt like I was finally in a good place mentally. However, when the year actually began it became very hectic and I was quickly overwhelmed with work. This caused my anxiety to spiral and it eventually got so bad that there were many days where I couldn't come to school because I didn't want to face my teachers. Due to the fact that I was missing so much school I became depressed because I knew that I was letting down my family. It was a very dark time for me, and it is something that I would not have been able to work through without the support of my family and teachers. With a little work I was able to get back on track, both academically and mentally. Even though I have made progress, I know that there is still so much more that can be done. I want to make a change in my life because I know I can be better and I want to become better. I do not want to let the past define me, because I know that I am a different person now than I was then. The way things were going would not have gotten me very far in life. I want to make a change so that I can reach my full potential. My ultimate goal is to get to the point where my mental health does not pose a threat to my success. So far the steps I have taken to achieve this goal include, learning my triggers and how to overcome them, reaching out for help when I need it, and checking in with people to make sure I'm alright. Receiving this ​scholarship will help me achieve my goal by helping me further my education so that I can become successful. I plan to pay it forward by helping other people with mental health problems reach their full potential as well. My plan after high school is to go to college and study psychology. I want to be a psychologist because I want to give the same support I have been given to other kids who suffer from mental disorders like anxiety and depression. This scholarship will bring me one step forward toward that dream by helping me pay for college which will set me on my path to becoming a psychologist.

I consider myself to be a very optimistic person. I believe that looking on the bright side of things and maintaining a cheerful mindset can really make a difference during hard times. Optimism has gotten me through a lot of tough times in my life, so I can say first hand how much of a difference it makes. When I was in fifth grade I was diagnosed with moderate anxiety. That was a very hard year for me. The constant worries going through my head put a huge strain on my social life and my academic life. There were times where it was difficult to stay optimistic. However, trying to make the best of a bad situation is just in my nature and I was able to pull myself through by keeping a positive outlook that things would get better, and eventually they did. Another time when I had to stay optimistic was during the pandemic lockdown back in early 2020. It was like nothing I had ever experienced in my life and I knew other people felt the same. Turning on the news everyday became a trial because everything always seemed so terrible. It was here that my optimism was truly tested. It was a challenge, but I tried to look on the bright side and stayed cautiously optimistic that things would be alright. Staying positive was extremely beneficial for my mental health during this time. My optimism throughout these experiences has taught me that you never know what life will throw at you, but it is your reaction to it that determines whether you will crumble or if you will thrive. If you stay optimistic and don't let the pressure and stress get you, you will see just how much of a difference it makes overcoming adversity.

My utopian vision for optimal mental health in the black community is a world where urban communities as well as other communities of color have just as much access to mental health facilities as their counterparts. It is evident that there is a huge problem across the country with how disproportionate access to mental health care is depending on the communities and/or neighborhoods that people live in. Many studies have shown that black and brown communities are severely lacking in providing mental health care to the public compared to predominantly white communities. As a result, there is much less help offered to individuals who struggle with mental disorders. There can be many reasons for this, but the main one is usually that communities of color just don't have the funding to set up these kinds of facilities for it's citizens. Not having good mental health care services that are easily accessible for black communities is detrimental in many ways. One way this hurts the community is by causing incarceration rates to go up. A big problem with society is that it is a common belief that all problems can be solved with discipline. Instead of finding out why a person is behaving the way they are, society tries to "snap them out of it." This is especially true regarding the correlation between mental health and incarceration in black communities. Instead of getting these individuals help, the first response is to throw them in jail. Another way the lack of mental health services negatively impacts the community is by forcing individuals in these communities to turn to other means of coping when they can't get professional help. This includes turning to drug use, alcoholism, and many other different means of false comfort. Factoring in all the negative affects it is clear that mental health in the black community is something that needs to be dealt with professionally. Another big aspect of my utopian vision is a reality where the stigma that surrounds mental health is completely eliminated in black communities. The struggles and obstacles our people have faced throughout history has shaped the mindset for a lot of black people that the only way to get through life is to be tough and to never show weakness, and because of this, receiving professional help from a psychologist or psychiatrist is often looked down upon. I want to live in a world where this is no longer the case. Mental health care and advocacy can help achieve social justice for communities of color by showing the world that our feelings and our mindsets matter just as much as everyone else's. The only way to achieve true social justice is to make sure that we have equal opportunities in everything, and right now that is not the case with many things, mental health being one of them. Bringing awareness to the disproportion in mental health will also bring attention to how many other necessities many black communities are not given access to which will create a foundation to make change. As a black woman, I have seen firsthand the lack of thought and care given to the black community in terms of mental health services, and that is why I want to be a psychologist so badly, so that I can give a voice to underrepresented groups.

For as long as I can remember I have suffered from moderate to severe anxiety. When I was in the fifth and sixth grade, my anxiety was the worst it has ever been. I had trouble sitting still in class and I was constantly worried that something bad was going to happen. I would get frequent panic attacks out of nowhere and it would make me feel like everything was closing in on me. On top of all of this I was not getting much sleep at night because of all the thoughts and fears running through my head. It was a very hard time in my life. My school life and social life was impacted greatly and I felt more alone than I had ever felt before or have felt sense. I purposely started to isolate myself from the other kids because I felt like nobody could understand what I was gong through. My old friends started to distance themselves from me because they thought that I was no longer the same. My self confidence decreased drastically as well as my ability to trust others and everyday felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper into a hole that I could not get out of. There were times where I did not want to go to school or even get out of bed. At first I was very adamant about trying to figure out a solution to everything I was going through by myself and so I kept everything on the inside, but when it became apparent to my aunt, my legal guardian, that something very serious was going on she wasted no time trying to get me help. She scheduled an appointment with a nearby therapist immediately and we went into her office the following week. I remember the first time I stepped into the therapist's office. I was upset and angry with my aunt for thinking I needed help and I didn't think this woman would be able to change anything. It was that meeting where I was first diagnosed with anxiety. When I went back home that day I googled anxiety and a lot of my habits and quirks all started to make sense. From that day forward I decided that I would be open with my therapist about everything. It took a while but eventually the progress I was making with my therapist really started to shine through. I was no longer as anxious as before and I was able to gain confidence and rebuild relationships. For the first time in a long time the future was looking bright. When I think back to this time I can honestly say that what I learned is that allowing yourself receive help from professionals can really make a difference during hard times. This is why I want to study psychology and eventually become a therapist myself. I want to give kids the same opportunity to get their lives back on track that I was given. Inspiring and helping others is important to me because everybody deserves someone who will fight for them the way my aunt and my therapist fought for me.

My relationship with my mother is quite different from other mother-daughter relationships. My mother suffers from Asperger's, a disability on the autism spectrum that makes it hard to focus and to develop social interactions. When I was just a baby I was taken away from her and sent to live with close relatives because it was decided that she was not in the state of mind to raise a child. As I got older I was never sent back to live with her full time. Even though I did not live with her I often got to spend time with her throughout my childhood. We did not live far from each other and so it was not much of a hassle to get to see her. As a young child I knew that my mom was different from other parents. Some common signs of Asperger's are a lack of interest in affection/touch and the inability to be able to read people's feelings. These are some things that my mom really suffers from and unfortunately it was no different even with her own daughter. She loves me very much but she was never very affectionate with me. She never initiated hugs or gave kisses. Even when I was sad it was hard for her to understand my feelings and know what to say or do to comfort me. It was hard for her to have the social awareness to focus on my needs. I felt like she could never focus on just me. Having this kind of obstacle with a mother, can be very challenging, especially for a young kid, and it often made me feel discouraged. I always felt like there was an invisible barrier keeping us worlds apart that we couldn't fight against. Luckily, there was one person who understood what I was going through and helped me to see things for what they really are. This person was my grandfather, the father of my mother. My mom had lived with him her entire life. My grandfather is the one who instilled in me the importance of having a close relationship with my mom. He often told me that when he was gone, I would be the only person left to take care of her and look after her because throughout her life my mom often had problems taking care of herself. Ever since my grandfather shared this with me it has made my desire to succeed so much stronger. Even though my relationship with my mom is not perfect I really love her and I want to do right by her and make sure she is looked after. I knew that the best way to do this was through education. Education is the key that opens up so many opportunities and I knew that by doing well in school would get me into a good college that would set me onto the path of getting a good job. Once I had a good job I would be in the position to make sure my mom lived comfortably for the rest of her life. My mom is my main reason for wanting to attend college and why I am trying so hard to succeed. My mom is who she is and even though she's not prefect, I owe it to her to try my best.