I was chair for Generation Mental Health’s third annual conference: Youth Advocating for the Future of Mental Health. While it was certainly a lot of work, looking back to what the team and I achieved, I could not be more proud of what we accomplished.
The biggest challenge we faced was deciding how to host this year's conference. We had an idea of what a virtual, global conference looked like, but we didn’t know how to create a similar valuable conference at the University of Michigan. Through hard work and motivation, we did it! We delivered a two day event, the first day being a virtual event facilitated through Zoom conferencing, and the second being our very first in-person event on campus at the University of Michigan.
Having experienced both the virtual and in-person conferences, I have found that both were really effective in strengthening a sense of community among youth mental health advocates. In every Zoom meeting – whether for a keynote, panel, or workshop – the speakers were engaged. Moreover, the audience asked questions and expressed genuine interest at every event. In particular, during the Climate Change and Mental Health Panel, we all participated in a discussion about how we have experienced climate change in our individual settings, and the impact that has had on our own mental health. Although as a group we spanned multiple geographic settings worldwide, we felt like a community as we spoke about our personal experiences and were able to be vulnerable with one another.
Similarly, during the in-person event, there was a strong sense of community as everyone who attended listened actively to each of our speakers and participated in powerful discussions. I especially enjoyed our conversation with Bear as he discussed his lived experience with incarceration and how that impacted his mental health. Though his speech would have been just as powerful on Zoom, the knowledge and sentiment that everyone is sharing space in the same room made this conversation all the more powerful.
Overall, being Generation’s Mental Health chair for the third annual conference, “Youth Advocating for the Future of Mental Health,” has been extremely rewarding. We were faced with many bumps in the road leading to the conference, but through teamwork, motivation, and passion for mental health, we were able to create a virtual and in-person community that is dedicated to mental health awareness and change.
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