Watanabe spreads awareness about mental health through You Minded

Emily von Buttlar

Section: Features

 Features Editor 

 

Watanabe spreads awareness about mental health through You Minded

 

Senior Yua Watanabe creates an organization to raise awareness about mental health called You Minded. 

 

Watanabe originally started You Minded as her Girl Scout Gold Award Project to make a difference in the community. Watanabe began in April of 2019 by initially choosing and learning more about her topic for the project. Through this, she learned that high schoolers have a greater chance for people to develop mental health issues. Watanabe decided to start small with her website and started a post-it project for everyone to indulge in by writing down their thoughts or encouraging words.

 

“For me, mental health was something that I wanted to address because going out of high school and being in the Manhattan Beach community, it was something that was very prevalent,” Watanabe said. 

 

The post-it notes are anonymous and put on the home page of youminded.com. Anyone who goes onto the website can see what others have said and hopefully help in one way or another. Many people have post-it notes, and it is a very simple way to get out negative thoughts and anonymously share, according to Watanabe.

 

“I saw a lot of people around me were coping with depression, anxiety and stress that were put upon them throughout high school,” Watanabe said.

 

Watanabe created a poster that had six different hotlines regarding mental health. She put the posters around the South Bay school districts to inform people of the hotline available. Not only do the posters include hotlines for suicide prevention but also for stress, anxiety and more. 

 

“[The posters have hotlines for] the Trevor project, which is a lifeline for LGBTQ youth, [and] there is another one called Crisis Text Line where you can text and not call,” Watanabe said. “There’s also a teen line which is another teenager talking to you”. 

 

Watanabe also addressed AB (assembly bill) 2246, which supported all schools having a suicide prevention or hotline for students to talk to. Additionally, since May is Mental Health Awareness Month and mental illness is declining during quarantine, Watanabe decided to incorporate the project from her physics in which she had to make a difference in the community around her and Girl Scouts together into one. 

 

“[Senior Alexia Pepemehmetoglu and I] had people take pictures of themselves with a butterfly to spread the word that there was a resource or asset they could use online”. Watanabe said.

     

 

One of the greatest challenges for Watanabe was encouraging others to open up about what they are going through to someone on a hotline or to write what they were going through on her website. 

 

“I reached out to the American Suicide Foundation Program (ASFP),” Watanabe said. “I’ve been in a partnership with Beach Cities Health District who has helped me reach out to the middle and high schools. The Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Crisis Text Line, and the Trevor Project and MADA, I want to reach out to those organizations. I was hoping to raise money since they are non-profit to expand their awareness”.