Ryan Yebba Memorial Mental Health Scholarship

My passion for mental health advocacy comes from a lifetime of seeing how deeply emotional wounds can affect young people—and from knowing firsthand what it feels like to be broken but still choose to rebuild. I have experienced trauma, domestic violence, and hardship, and I’ve also seen how emotional pain can follow children long after the hurt ends. Those experiences have fueled my mission to help children and adolescents find hope, healing, and a voice in a world that too often silences them. I want to use my education in social work to become a counselor who not only supports young people through their struggles, but also advocates for lasting change in how our schools and communities approach mental health and bullying. Bullying and harassment in K–12 schools can leave scars that last a lifetime. Many children suffer in silence because they don’t know who to turn to, or they fear they won’t be believed. I plan to advocate for progress by creating safe, inclusive spaces where every student feels heard and supported. This begins with education—teaching both students and staff about empathy, respect, and the warning signs of mental health struggles. I want to work within schools to implement trauma-informed programs that emphasize kindness, peer support, and conflict resolution. By training teachers and administrators to recognize emotional distress early, we can intervene before pain turns into despair. As a future therapist, I want to help remove the stigma surrounding mental health in schools. Too often, students are labeled as “troublemakers” when they’re really hurting. My goal is to help schools replace punishment with understanding—to see behavior as communication and to respond with compassion rather than judgment. Every child deserves to be treated as someone worth saving, not as a problem to be managed. One of the greatest barriers children face today is navigating the complicated process of getting mental health care. Parents are often overwhelmed, schools are underfunded, and the system itself is confusing. I want to streamline that process by working directly with families to connect them to counseling and community resources. As a social worker, I hope to collaborate with schools, churches, and local organizations to build accessible referral systems that make it easier for children to receive consistent, affordable treatment. Mental health support should never be a luxury—it should be a right. Bullying and trauma can strip young people of their self-worth, but therapy can help them reclaim it. I believe in meeting every child where they are, listening without judgment, and helping them rebuild the confidence they need to stand tall again. My faith and life experiences have taught me that even in the darkest moments, healing is possible with love, patience, and guidance. I want to be that source of light for the next generation. Becoming a counselor is not just my career goal—it’s my life’s purpose. I want to dedicate my work to protecting the mental and emotional well-being of children who feel unseen or unheard. By combining advocacy, education, and compassionate care, I hope to continue Ryan Yebba’s legacy of bringing awareness and change to the issue of bullying and youth mental health. My dream is to ensure that no child feels hopeless, forgotten, or alone—and that every young person knows that their voice and their life matter deeply.

One hurdle young people face is developing emotional intelligence, managing their own emotions, and being aware of other people and how they may feel. As a person with ADD with sensory issues and anxiety, my school environment was unbearable, especially during COVID. The COVID environment was stressful enough; the kids were worse. The environment was right out of a page in Dr. Zimbardo’s book on social psychology. I began to get sick and depressed, and I went home a lot. I had to learn coping mechanisms for stress and anxiety to do better for myself and survive school. "Mind Full" was born from my journey through depression and anxiety. It has become a mental health initiative in our schools in Cobb County, Georgia. The “Mind Full” program supplies charities and school counselors with art therapy kits for K–12 students and patients. We use recycled, easily sourced items to supply most of the materials in the kits. I wanted the materials to be easy to source and low-cost, so anyone could do it at home or school. The purpose of offering integrative therapy kits is to provide a tool to allow the student to articulate feelings or emotions that are difficult to verbalize, which improves well-being. In my opinion, many students have difficulty identifying and articulating their feelings. The kits are designed to aid school counselors, teachers, and therapists working with K–12-aged students in conjunction with other treatments or to help identify high-risk students. Additionally, older students benefit from stress and anxiety relief through learning outlets of expression. I aim to keep students in school and provide them with a means to express thoughts, feelings, stress, and anxiety. Most of the school counselors we supply use them in small groups and individual sessions with students in the school environment. My other goal with Mind Full was to work on the premise that empathy and emotional intelligence can be learned through awareness and education. On the same note, destigmatizing mental health works the same way. While we are learning empathy, we are also destigmatizing mental health by creating a more compassionate and aware environment. With those goals, my kit materials are gathered, curated, and made by high school students. We get our volunteers through school clubs and announcements. Students earn community service hours by participating in kit preparation workshops where they learn about Mind Full’s purpose and mission and about having empathy for others. We work alongside Sources of Strength (SOS), and all my workshop leaders must go through SOS training as well. Mind Full crystallized my desire to major in psychology in college. My goal, therefore, is to go to a research university. I plan to obtain music and art therapy certifications after I graduate from college to use in conjunction with counseling treatment plans. My dream is to destigmatize mental health and teach people coping mechanisms that can be done with minimal resources. Bringing active programs into schools that focus on creating emotional intelligence creates a more supportive environment among students. I hope that it will reduce bullying as students become more aware of others. My ultimate dream and something I am working towards is for Mind Full to go nonprofit and spread to different high schools. The high schools, in turn, supply the local schools around them. Mind Full helps schools flag students for care earlier than usual. My website (mind-fullproject.org) lists resources that are free for immediate care. Students spend most of their day in school. Having a school committed to a mental health program also provides a more supportive focus on getting a student's help sooner.