Keeping it together

“It is when we act freely for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

My public appearance in the “It’s Gonna be OK Juniors” video at the beginning of this year was revealing. Under a time of immense stress, I let slip my personal frustrations in a video that was actually supposed to be encouraging. But that was just part one of my out-of-character behavior.

​Next, under another time of immense stress, caffeine, and work, I let slip my frustrations to more than just a group of hesitant juniors. My stresses translated to my friends, my teammates, and my family - part two of out-of-character Bailey.

These moments where I felt like a completely and entirely different person were moments that I felt mental distress. Mental distress is between “Wellness" and "Mental Illness" on the continuum of mental distress. I’ve observed that this occurs with plenty of people in our society and, even more importantly, our school, Episcopal.  Why? With investigation, I've found an answer: the enablement of technology.

American culture has always supported hard work ethic with ideals such as the American dream. Our culture has also generalized feelings of dissatisfaction or unhappiness with sayings such as, “Welcome to the real world.” Then, technology has broadened our abilities of completing work  anywhere with wifi. With the combination of our cultural pushes and the enablement of technology, we complete a lot of work within the given day and it is perceived as “ok” when we start to suffer because of it.
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Work is a factor of our everyday lives that we need in order to be mentally healthy, but somewhere along the way, we lost the balance between work and all the other aspects of our life.  When people take breaks during their day and do something they enjoy they can majorly influence their mental health for the better.

When we start taking breaks we start feeling better and our brains begin to make connections to learn those feelings. When these connections build,  it becomes easier and easier to remember those feelings. Basically, as we learn how to live well, we become used to having wellness.
 
Wellness is said to increase test scores and work productivity. Not only do we need to feel better, but feeling better gives us better futures full of ability and productivity. Instilling time in our everyday lives to focus on our mental health is basically building better experiences for our futures.
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A lot of the time, breaks can be seen as a disadvantage. In reality, they give you the advantage. So, we created wellness week. Wellness Week is a time for the students to take these breaks with purposeful activities planned out for them. These activities were planned out in the hopes that although the students have plenty of work to be doing, they get the chance to have some fun along the way. By practicing wellness skills, we can incorporate them into our everyday lives adding to our sense of well being, our productivity, and the betterment of all our relationships. We hope students discover some skills that help them create better lives.

Taking a break with CC's Coffee

Enjoying a meal with Kolache Kitchen

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Bailey Leopard

Bailey is a senior at Episcopal who decided to do her thesis project on Mental Health. She found interest in Mental Health out of a personal interest in how her own generation approaches the concern for maintaining happiness in their own lives. At Episcopal, she plays basketball and softball during winter and spring, but outside of school, she enjoys things like hiking and SCUBA diving. She has not decided which college she will be attending but her top pick is the University of Georgia with an interest in Pre-Veterinary medicine. ​