Since the start of April, CHS Depression Awareness Group (DAG) has been celebrating mental health awareness month. The team has put together activities to help educate CHS students about the stigma surrounding mental health as well as provide practices and aids to help students deal with the building stress from the end of the school year.

“[April] is when all of our initiatives are kind of coming to a head,” said Zoë Simmons, DAG President. “It’s our way of trying to support students during testing week and other hard weeks of the semester. This is the time of the semester where people get very burnt out, so having something to let the student body know that we’re here for you and we have resources to help.”

During standardized testing last week, DAG prepared goodie bags for every student in the school and distributed them by forum. The bags were filled with snacks, number two pencils and other mental health aids.

“I think that’s a fun way to connect with the whole student body,” Simmons said. “We put a lot of effort into trying to find things that would actually be used by people.”

DAG has also held storytelling events on Tuesdays where students hold skits in front of forums that demonstrate a potential scene and teach forum members how they could be a supportive community member to those affected by mental health issues. Simmons was also in charge of the “Mantra Board.” Located outside of Bodley Hall, this board provides coping skills and new encouraging mantras each week for students to take with them.

“People care,” Simmons said. “It’s really important to students to kind of feel seen and heard about their feelings and to have some more education about those situations. That kind of thing was my favorite thing that we’ve done.”

If you want to participate in DAG, speak to Becky about how to get involved for next year.