American Eagle recently partnered with The Global Coalition on Youth Mental Health to host “YMentalHealth? Our Future Depends On It,” a forum featuring the experiences of young people who are living with mental health challenges. The event was an important opportunity for young people to talk about why mental health matters to them, with the hope of raising awareness and conveying the urgency to policy leaders.
“Hope is when you turn from statistics to stories,” said Brooks Kenny, from the Global Coalition on Youth Mental Health. The YMentalHealth event featured stories with an emotional impact that went beyond statistics. These panelists were young people who have created organizations and rallied communities around the issue of mental health. And beyond that, they are triumphant survivors of brain wiring that can bring daily challenges.
The event was introduced by Marcie Eberhart, Senior Director of the AEO Foundation and Corporate Social Responsibility for AEO Outfitters, who described American Eagle’s commitment to making mental health a priority to both associates and customers. She decided to get involved in the initiative by partnering with Gabby Frost, Founder and CEO of The Buddy Project, to host a line of hoodies with mental health notes. 100% of the sales from the hoodies benefitted The Buddy Project, a charity to reduce self-harm and raise awareness of suicide among young people. The collaboration flourished from there.
The panelists may have been young, but they showed us exactly why our future depends on voices like theirs. With wisdom beyond their years, they shared personal experiences that exposed the flaws in our mental health system, while articulating truly visionary pathways for the future.
The forum included Diana Veras, who is redefining beauty industry through her work as a model and is helping pave the way for body positivity. She has also spoken publicly about her mental health challenges, and got real about the fact that she almost didn’t make it to the forum because of her social anxiety. “Show up, even when you’re not all the way healed,” she advised the audience.
Ali Hougnou, Director of Volunteer Services of Project HEAL, spoke of being pressured to lose weight as a child, resulting in a seven year battle with anorexia that ultimately instilled in her a drive and passion to help others. The two founders of Commit to Kind traced the roots of the non-profit, an organization committed to building a culture of kindness in schools and communities.
Mental health advocate Peter Lee Kramer spoke about the years of shame he endured, before realizing that his problems were rooted in a brain disorder: “I didn’t understand how my anxiety and depression were shaping my reality. I thought everything I was experiencing was normal, and I was just failing.”
Gabby Frost went on to speak about her vision for starting a non-profit, which started one night when she logged into Twitter and saw that three of her followers were considering suicide. She realized in that moment that she couldn’t wait for adults to stand up for youth mental health—she had to do it for herself.
And Lian Zeitz, Director of Youth Advocacy at CitiesRISE, left the audience and fellow panelists with some of the most powerful words of the day:
“Healing is lifelong, and mental health is a spectrum. It’s not sick and healthy like they like to teach us. It’s a continuum that we experience throughout our life. And knowing that we’re on that journey is healing.”
