I interviewed a senior in the GSWLA program at Tallwood High School about her senior project on how mental health is portrayed in the media.

The following questions demonstrate her research and passion in learning and teaching mental health to her community.

Roaring Gazette: What is your senior project topic?

H. Daniels: My senior project topic is how the media portrays mental illnesses and how that affects the public’s view of them.

RG: Does your project promote the importance of mental health issues? How?

H. Daniels: Yes, it promotes the idea that there needs to be better representation of mental illnesses in media, for example, in movies and video games. And it gives out the idea that there are inaccurate representations of it already and people are learning misconceptions of this and that needs to be fixed.

RG: Why is mental health important?

H. Daniels: Mental health is important because it affects a lot of people, one out of four people are affected by mental health issues and worldwide around 450 million people have mental health issues. So, it’s not just one or two people dealing with it it’s a lot of people and that’s a lot of people not being correctly represented.

RG: Why do you think it’s important for people to learn about mental health?

H. Daniels: Personally, it’s because I know, as a mentally ill person myself and as someone who knows a lot of people dealing with similar issues, I think it’s important that other people will learn about them so… one, they can help their friends and un-learn false conceptions, for example, that people with depression can easily get over it in an instant when that’s not true. Also, we can get rid of the stigma that is portrayed in media and the false misconceptions that lead to people believing that people with mental illnesses are more violent than they actually are and that also allows people with mental illnesses to feel more comfortable speaking about it with other people and not being afraid of having it.

RG: Why did you choose to focus on mental health?

H. Daniels: I chose to focus on this topic because I have a lot of experience with it both personally and some of my friends deal with it as well. And also, I’m very passionate about teaching other people about how mental illnesses work. On that note, I want to be a psychologist when I’m older, so I want to help people that deal with these problems.

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