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Across Wisconsin, 60% of our high school students experience depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts. One in six struggles with a mental illness. For every child who dies by suicide, around 25 more make an attempt.
For years we’ve heard it’s okay to not be okay. It’s so much better to not be silent. That’s the driving idea behind a new organization focused on student mental health called Heading4ChangeMKE. As part of the BrandLab summer internship program, the students — Jacoby, Aamirah, Aryana, Jahmorris, and Astashia — teamed up with Milwaukee-based marketing and advertising agency SRH.
The students are working to fundraise for mental health education via NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness.
NAMI's End the Silence program provides an in-school presentation offering opportunities for students to learn about mental illness and talk with trained young adult presenters who have lived through their own mental health conditions. Since the first presentation to 9th graders at Oconomowoc High School in 2015, NAMI Southeast Wisconsin has done 641 ETS presentations to 13,481 students at 15 area schools.
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