One of the most practical solutions for helping people with mental health issues is to simply listen and as cheesy as it may sound, be kind. I feel like often, as people it's so easy to just pay attention to surface-level things and say offensive things to someone to be “brutally honest” or “real”. But in most cases, this is simply not the humane way to communicate with people. You can be honest and transparent with someone while still being kind. As a person who’s taken heavy blows to my mental health and self-esteem due to being talked about while also suffering from severe undiscovered anxiety, the most useful thing that I could’ve experienced in those times was a little bit of kindness. It's so easy to just ignorantly judge people based on what you see, but nobody knows what could be affecting a person internally. Although having experienced the worst lows of depression wasn’t fun at all, it opened my eyes to why it's so important to show empathy to one another and to be there for the people who especially feel like they have no one else to go to. Not dismissing the fact that you shouldn’t be instantaneously expected to be someone’s therapist, but it's always good to at least check up on people the same way that you'd want someone to check up on you. Checking up on the ones closest to you while also being transparent with your mental health issues would overall make the topic of mental health a much more normal thing to talk about. Being kind to one another and looking at people through a nonjudgemental lens seems to be the best way to help people struggling with mental health.

Hello! My name is Kellee and as you can see based on my profile, I'm a 17-year-old from Salisbury, Maryland. I’ve lived in Salisbury my entire life, and although I appreciate my time spent in this quaint little town, I want to branch off and experience new things. As of right now, I’m planning on attending the University of Maryland College Park as a computer science major. It’ll be a big change from Salisbury, but I’m ready for the challenge. I enjoy activities such as reading, writing, and painting. However, as much as I enjoy exercising my creative side, I also love all things STEM. I love subjects such as calculus, chemistry, biology, and computer science because I enjoy the challenge. Being able to solve hard problems is fulfilling, and I hope to get that same level of fulfillment out of my career. Based on my interests, Computer science seems like the perfect college major for me. Not only can I work on multiple different and unique challenges, but I can also program from anywhere in the world! One of my passions in life is to travel. Being a software programmer would allow me to program from just about anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection. I already have a bit of experience with HTML, CSS, and Javascript thanks to the Girls Who Code Program I was a part of this past summer. The program strengthened my interest in coding and influenced me to take an introductory dual enrollment course for Computer Science at Salisbury University this school year (which I’m enjoying so far)! I plan on making a positive impact on the world with my STEM degree by being one of the people that help build and run engines such as Google. Google is such a powerful engine that helps millions of people find what they’re looking for in a matter of milliseconds. Thanks to engines like Google, knowledge can be obtained with just a click of a button. Having that big of an impact on the world and how we find information seems like such an amazing and fulfilling thing. Not only that, but being a good example for my nieces, nephews, and other African American teens looking into different career paths is something I’ve always wanted to do. Many African Americans and people in lower-income communities tend to underestimate the importance of technology, and many seem to be uneducated on the many career paths that are open to them in tech. I want to show people that it’s okay to be a nerdy black girl who’s interested in computer programming and web design. You rarely see a lot of diversity in fields like this and I want to diversify the tech industry. Not only in terms of race, but also in terms of gender. The Girls Who Code program I was a part of really opened my eyes to a lot of like-minded young women. It was so refreshing to see a group of females from so many different races and backgrounds show interest in coding! It truly felt like a sisterhood and I want to recreate that feeling everywhere I go! In the future, if my interest in coding remains, I may end up volunteering and helping in a future Girls Who Code Summer program, but in the meantime, I’m still looking for more ways to enhance my coding knowledge.