Dear Governor,
My name is Diana Blackhurst. I'm an 18-year-old from Lake Jackson, Texas, which is about an hour south from Houston. However, I recently moved to Kansas to study psychology in college.
Like many people (approximately one out of four), I have a mental illness. I have severe depression and anxiety that I didn't realize I had until my second year of high school when I started crying over the smallest things, like tests, that didn't seem to bother anyone else as it bothered me.
By the end of my third year of high school, I had been in and out of school and put into two different mental hospitals for suicidal ideations. I'm telling you this because I know I'm not the only one. I knew many people in high school who were fighting a mental disorder, but because it isn't really normal to talk about it, no one knew.
The only reason I knew who was struggling was that I wasn't afraid to be vocal about it because I had a strong support system: my family. However, not everyone can look to their family to find someone who understands. When you are depressed, you often feel like you don't have anyone.
As I learned my last year of high school when I started a mental health club with the newly hired mental health professionals at my school, depression takes many forms. It can be crying and isolation, but it can also be laughter and jokes, so it is very important for teachers to know the signs. They need to not only be able to recognize when someone needs help but also, they need to have someone refer the student to for them to get help.
I request that mental health professionals be hired to work in schools, and for the therapy consent forms to be put in with the initial paperwork used to become a student so that the children of the parents who agree can get help right when they need it.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Diana Blackhurst
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