Mental Health Speaker to Speak at EHS

Story by Khloe Crawshaw »

On April 4, student mental health speaker Jeff Yalden will be giving an hour-and-a-half-long presentation for Eudora High School. Yalden has traveled to all 50 states and 49 countries giving mental-health speeches to students, and is the number-one teen motivator in North America.

Mental health awareness can be something that is difficult to tackle within one school system alone. Some teenagers may not know the best ways to go about dealing with their mental health, and that can lead to problems in not only school life, but in work and other outside activities. In some cases, even when a student’s mental health gets to a point where the person is unable to deal with it, they do not reach out for help. Yalden’s website, states many times how hard it is for some teens to reach out. One of Yalden’s main goals is to help students understand that they can reach out for help, and that they are not alone in the process of helping to overcome their obstacles.

Yalden also stresses suicide prevention. He believes that in schools, suicide and mental health are things that aren’t talked about enough.

“Suicide is taboo,” he said, “ It’s surprising when I talk to students, parents, faculty, staff members, and administrators, to hear they are often surprised when they hear how vulnerable their community is to depression and other mental health concerns.”

Yalden believes that as much as schools try to bring in awareness for mental health, sometimes, a school’s efforts aren’t enough.

Yalden doesn’t just focus on the grim aspects of mental health, though. While he does cover topics such as suicide risk and dealing with anxiety and depression, he is said to be a very positive and energetic speaker. Andrea Pyle, one of the leaders of the Student Mental Health Committee, said that she has high hopes for Yalden’s energy when talking to students.

“[He] really connects with his audience and is one who doesn’t speak at them, but speaks with them,” Pyle said.

The school staff had begun the conversation about bringing in a speaker like Jeff Yalden in the fall of 2017. Mrs. Pyle was one of the many teachers to see the benefit of bringing in someone like Yalden from outside of the school and the community. Yalden himself believes that sometimes, it makes a bigger impact when someone comes from outside of the community.

“I do think that he will be more effective than a student or teacher,” Pyle said, “Sometimes it takes us getting outside of our daily comfort zone and hearing from a different person, with different or similar experiences, and with a different perspective that might help us open our minds to the possibilities of new ways to manage the struggles and stresses in our lives.”

Yalden, himself, is a man who struggles with his own mental illnesses and internal battles. He isn’t some adult who swoops in claiming he understands ‘what it feels like’ to be a teenager with a mental illness today. Yalden has bipolar type 2, depression and anxiety, and goes to a therapist. He understands what it feels like to be lost and confused.

“[Students] learn that I faced many of the same challenges they are facing,” Yalden writes on his website, “and they hear about the key qualities that I had to cultivate in myself in order to overcome my obstacles to and become ‘The Man’ I am today.”

He believes that, through everything that comes with the mental illness someone can be facing, there is always hope for another, better tomorrow.