At any one time, around 8550 people under 18 in Australia suffer from clinical depression. In order to help those with depression, we need to talk about it, and to talk abotu it, we need to lose the stigma attached to adolescent depression: here's how you can help.
Submitted
16/05/2006
By
Leah
Views
34544
Comments
2
Updated
9/07/2009
What’s involved?
1 in 5 people between 15-24 will experience depression at some point- that's up to 8550 people under 18 years at any one moment in Australia alone. In order to help those with depression, we need to talk about it, and to talk about it, we need to lose the stigma attached to adolescent depression.
Talk About It!!
- Hold a Depression Awareness Seminar at your school or uni in which you get your local counselling centres and maybe even a couple of Reachout! or BeyondBlue representatives to attend, and if you know anyone who has experienced depression, they might like to speak about their personal experiences with mental health?
- Write an article for your school or uni newsletter, or your local paper
- Spread awareness online by speaking about your personal experiences of mental illnesses (including depression) on popular youth websites such as http://www.reachout.com.au and http://www.beyondblue.org.au; you never know how many people you'll help!
- Spread awareness by spreading merchanidse: you can order lots of fun things like posters, stickers, temporary tattoos, wristbands and postcards to stick around your school or uni campus, or your hometown from:
Reachout:
http://www.reachout.com.au/default.asp?ti=1139
YBBlue:
http://www.beyondblue.org.au/ybblue/index.aspx?lin...
Read about it
What better way to lower the stigma and ignorance of Depression than by reading about it, and encouraging your fellow peers to do the same? Here's a few websites to get you started:
Fundraising
Support those who support you- rope your local schools, universities and businesses into donating to institutions that help young people with depression and other mental health disorders such as:
Get political
Write a letter to your local government (you might even like to start a petition) urging them to distribute some of the federal Budget funding towards Reachout!
Why should people do this?
I want to do this!
