Chantel S. Husted Memorial Scholarship

I’ve felt called to a role as a mental health practitioner at least since my freshman year of high school. Mental illness and mental health have played a significant role in my developing identity as a person and future professional. When I was 12 years old, my father was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. It was both comforting and terrifying, as a child, to have a name for what my father was experiencing and what was contributing to the mood instability that had suddenly begun causing our family so much distress. Comforting, because it meant there was a way to help him feel better. Terrifying, because he wanted nothing to do with therapy, medication, or any other kind of treatment, and I learned to walk on eggshells around his moods. I always wondered if, had he had a name for his experience and the right support to learn to navigate it from an earlier age, I might have gotten to keep my father in my life. I have also struggled with my own mental health throughout the course of my adolescence and young adulthood. I have lived with anxiety since childhood. Approximately a year and a half ago, in the most severe stages of the pandemic, I moved across the country with my partner to pursue our graduate education and subsequently experienced my rock bottom. I grew up in a household which emphasized practicing mindfulness, caring for one's mental state, and finding support in a neutral therapeutic setting. Despite all the resources and coping skills I had, I was ill-equipped to handle the debilitating panic attacks and accompanying depressive state I began to experience upon leaving my home and the support system I had come to rely on more heavily than I even recognized. It took months of intensive therapy to achieve equilibrium again. Had I not sought help, I don't believe I would still be here. Aside from the individual ways in which my lived experience has been impacted by mental illness, as have so many of ours, the development of my generation has borne witness to our nation’s evolving understanding of mental health as it is influenced by biopsychosocial factors. Much of this progress was made with the world watching, and too much of it was informed by nationwide, intergenerational trauma. The world I’ve known has been inundated with violence. Relatively isolated instances such as the tragedy of 9/11, widespread ripples of events like the 270 mass shootings we’ve seen just since 2009, the rampant systemic oppression of racial minorities at the hands of lawmakers and enforcers; these are events which, when linked and examined, point to root causes such as deep-seated socio-cultural injustices and policies founded by a nation built to serve only specific members of our society. Despite all we’ve lived through and fought against, it feels like very little has changed, and very few of us have healed. In the new age where working from home is commonplace, so many of us have been carrying the weight of these stressors in isolation. I was blessed to be raised by a woman who above all else, taught me to take my own mental health needs seriously, and without the support I have had, I would not have been able to pursue a master's degree that will enable me to attain therapeutic licensure. All I want is to join the ranks of those who want the same for every person on this earth and to help as many people as I can to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Each day I am one step closer.