Mental Health and the Potential for Worlwide Change

My project deals with mental health and the potential for changing the world. Well, I’m sort of a pessimist in that I believe that it’s impossible for one person to make a worldwide change because it’s incredibly difficult to change the opinions of others or control their actions. It really takes an understanding of the issue at hand and a cooperative, collective effort from a lot of people to make a big change. This is why I believe that any worldwide change has to start with the individual making a change within themselves…realizing the issue and realizing that they themselves might need to change. “You have to be the change” (Tom Brandner). And if enough people make that change and direct themselves toward whatever goal needs to be accomplished then a worldwide change can occur.

Take Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement for example. It wasn’t just Dr. King or Rosa Parks or anybody who was in favor of social reform that made a change. It was also all the people who were opposed to social reform that eventually realized the extent of the issue and realized they needed to change and accept African Americans to the best of their ability in order to live in a peaceful society. But if those people who were opposed to giving rights to African Americans didn’t decide to change then obviously no social change would have come about.

So for my project, instead of handing out flyers and surveys, doing a bunch of research and interviewing people, it’s on a much smaller scale. I worked on an applied project, but it didn’t involve anything except learning about myself and experimenting on my mental health. My project is really all about the individual exploring themselves and trying to better themselves in hopes that enough people can do that and find peace, satisfaction and happiness within themselves the world can be a better place. This brings up the mental health part. In order to achieve those things you must maintain a good, well-balanced mental state.

I realized this through an experience I had in the beginning of the year. I came down with an illness that very much threatened many other aspects of my life. I could barely sleep, I couldn’t really eat at all (I had no appetite), I fell behind in school because I was so preoccupied with my medical issue, and I didn’t even feel like seeing friends or having any fun. I called my parents frequently during this time period, questioning whether or not I belonged in college. My mother told me that some people just aren’t cut out for college, and she suggested that I just come home until the medical issue was over and we could decide what to do with the rest of my schooling. My father (who I spoke to more often) gave me more optimistic yet realistic advice. He told me to stay in school and finish the semester strong. He told me that even though it’s very difficult to do, the key to well-being and good mental health is to consider the health, social and academic aspects of your life and then change/fix/balance them in a way that you’ll feel the most positive results.

After having this experience I knew that it would make for a great ILS project. As this issue was still somewhat occurring at the same time that the project was assigned I decided to start a personal experiment. For the experiment I would do exactly what my dad told me to do. I would live every day paying attention to the social, health and academic parts of my life and really taking into consideration what I needed to do with each in order to fix my problem and live healthier (without ignoring any one component, no matter how much more important one of them might seem).  So I started going to bed a lot earlier, trying to go to sleep before 1:00am-1:30am; tried eating better and forcing myself to have a bigger appetite; studied a lot harder than what I was doing before and making sure I did well on my assignments and tests; and even though I haven’t really been able to go out and “party” since I got sick, I’ve been watching a lot of films with my good friend, playing and listening to a lot of music (which is my main hobby), going out to dinner with friends, and I even went to a concert last week.  My hypothesis, clearly, was that if I did those things and conquered those three pillars then I would feel positive effects and I would feel a lot healthier. I honestly doubted my hypothesis in the beginning stages of the experiment. I always thought that the whole “balance” thing was pretty cheesy and that it was just something adults told younger kids in order to motivate them in school. I didn’t think that it would produce any results, let alone positive ones. After evaluating the results at the end of about three weeks or so I can surprisingly say that my hypothesis was correct. After fixing the issues that I had fallen into and then continuing to satisfy each pillar day by day I found that I really did feel a lot healthier.

It’s a little bit confusing as to how this mental health study ties back to the original theme of the project: changing the world and making it a better place, and what I was saying about change. I think a lot of problems that exist in the world are the results of people being unsatisfied and unhappy with their lives…especially the people who are rich, or who have power or who have the resources to change the ways in which they live (basically anybody who has the privilege to go to college, have a job, even just live in a first world country with opportunity). We are the people who can really affect the world. If everyone who had the opportunities that we do could maintain a good mental health and live in peace and harmony then the world could potentially be a much brighter place. I realize that there are many other things that can affect your mental health, but as far as what you can control I challenge you to make that change and spread it to everyone you can.  “Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” (John Lennon)