Learning About Mental Health at the Jack Chapter Summit

By Molly Ahmed (‘21)

On Tuesday April 24, the Greenwood Jack Chapter went to the annual summit at Havergal. At the summit there were representatives from independent schools throughout Toronto, some of which had Jack Chapters and some who didn’t.

We broke off into groups with representatives different independent schools; these were the main groups that we did workshops with. We were fortunate enough to have representatives from Jack.org come in and remind us of the difference between mental health and mental illness, what factors contribute to how you feel, when it’s necessary to get help, as well as inform us of what the main message of Jack.org is.

The workshops and activities we did informed us about different aspects of mental health, as well as how to inform others of the stigma that prevent most youth and adults from getting the help that they need.

Some of the activities we did involve learning how to inform people who didn’t have any interest in the matter. There was a wall of questions the included: advice given to your younger self, how to inform others of events and topics, and in what ways to people contribute to the stigma.

We took a mindfulness break, which reminded us of how important it is to take time for ourselves every day. Before the Summit ended we met up with our individual Jack Chapters and discussed the rose, bud, and thorn of our schools (a highlight, a negative, and something to look forward to).

I think that all of us in the Greenwood Jack Chapter feel really inspired to make more changes to make our community a more open and accepting place for students and staff. It was comforting to know that other schools have similar issues with stigma, appropriate language, and encouraging students to get involved in activities. We feel even more encouraged to share our stories, and inform the Greenwood community that speaking out and getting help is something that we all need to do at some point in our lives.

We came back with a lot of ideas that we can integrate into our community and that can help destigmatize the barrier surrounding mental health and mental illness. I think that we have more ways to encourage students to get involved and interested, we can do this by advertising events more and explaining in more depth about what we are trying to accomplish.

We also feel even more of a need to promote the resources we have at Greenwood. We have an amazing support system at Greenwood that we don’t utilize as much as we should. For one we would like to make people more aware about Lori Houzer (who is a social worker that comes into our school), as well as informing people that guidance counselors, advisors, and teachers can be used for more than academic purposes.

Overall, the Jack Summit has inspired me to be more of an advocate in the Greenwood community as well as in my personal life.