Walking around campus, one might find themselves stopped in their tracks by sophomores Kyle Le, Milan Luna and Amanda Qin, who are readily equipped with a pair of earphones and a question like “What do you do to relieve your stress?” to help promote mental health amongst their peers.
Walnut Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) offers multiple events that members can compete in for the State Leadership Conference (SLC), one of them being Mental Health Promotion. Club members Le, Luna and Qin took the opportunity to form the group Walnut HOSA Wellness for the competition, where they collaboratively run an Instagram account dedicated to mental health advocacy. They regularly make posts and videos sharing helpful tips to students on how to take care of their mental state.
“Our main goal is to help the community with their mental health, mainly focusing on stress relief and self-care,” Qin said. “We’ve noticed that many people, especially high school students, deal with a lot of stress due to grades, sports, tests and other factors. We try to provide ways to relieve that stress.”
The team evenly splits up the task of making daily Instagram posts that include mindful tips and helpful reminders on how to boost and care for one’s well-being. Such reminders range from watching a movie or sharing a meal with someone to setting important boundaries with others and coming up with individual goals.
“As a team, we take turns creating posts so the process remains fun and not stressful. We always work together to share our own ideas and perspectives,” Luna said.
Aside from designing and creating daily Instagram posts, Le, Luna and Qin also work together to brainstorm and plan events together that could allow students to decompress in school. The three came up with a weekly activity known as Wellness Wednesdays, when they ask mental-health-related questions to students on campus and record and share their responses on social media.
“Wellness Wednesdays are my favorite event. I think it’s a great way for people to be involved, and I like being included in something that could make them smile,” Le said.
Le, Luna and Qin also recently hosted a slime-making event as a relaxing way for students to unwind and have fun with their friends. They try to make sure that all the events and activities they plan are interesting and appealing to students.
“We think it’s important for [the students] to be interested in what we do in order for them to benefit from the activities,” Qin said. “So many people came to our [slime-making event] and it was so exciting to see everyone having fun.”
The team first felt the passion to start the project when they all joined HOSA and collectively shared their opinions on mental health improvement.
“We have been friends for a while, but we discovered we share the same passion for mental health, so this HOSA event was perfect for us,” Luna said.
Although it started as a competitive event, Le, Luna and Qin hope to continue to work towards improving mental health in the community.
“It’s important to take care of your mental health because it’s something that is often neglected. Mental health is a real issue and once people start to realize the importance of it and start to take care of themselves, they can work even harder than before to reach their goals,” Le said.
