Maddy Gillner ’22
Last Monday, history teacher Allison Stephens and science teacher Jim Malone held a dinner meeting for interested students in which the two discussed their personal experiences living with anxiety and depression.
Malone said of the dinner, “Allison Stephens and I have run this type of meeting several times in the past. We knew that given COVID and the last two years, the need for a meeting such as this would be even greater this year than in the past.” Most years, this meeting takes place later in the year, but this year it occured on October 4. “We wanted to start right away, early in the year, because of COVID impacting teenagers so much over the last two years,” said Malone.
Malone hoped that the dinner let students see three things: “. . .that there are other students feeling the same way and wanting to talk, that there are adults in the community who share the students’ experiences with depression and anxiety, and that there is help available for them if they want to talk to a mental health professional.”
Students certainly did take a lot from the meeting. Bob Hollis ‘24 said, “It was genuinely a great conversation, starting with teacher experience from Ms. Stephens and Mr. Malone, then getting into questions from students. It also eventually made its way into some students’ experiences with anxiety and depression.”
Avallina Orfield ‘25 especially appreciated the sense of community she found there. “I went to the depression and anxiety dinner to find different perspectives on feelings that can be so common. Everyone there had either felt similar to me or also wanted to hear different perspectives,” she said, “I think it’s amazing that everyone there could feel comfortable so quickly.”
Will Sokolski ‘22 agreed, “The most important thing to be aware of while living with depression, at least for me, is knowing that other people are in the same boat. Having the experience of sitting down with people who are in a similar situation as myself helped with the feeling of alienation that I tend to get.”
Later in the week, the conversations continued during Family Weekend with a community-wide school meeting designed to address questions submitted about mental health from a professional vantage point. This meeting, in contrast to the first, was much more of an introduction to mental health at Mercersburg. According to fitness and performance coordinator Sarah Firestone ‘13, “We were hoping to just briefly touch on mental health, because it’s a larger topic and could be talked about a lot more than just one meeting. However, we wanted to bring it to the table to talk about and for you all as a student body to feel comfortable talking to us about.”
Cricket Tatone ‘24 said that this introduction was important. “There hasn’t been a lot of discussion over mental health yet, so I was excited to see this meeting,” she said, “We have to start somewhere.” Amy Shaffer Post ‘02, the school’s social emotional learning counselor, said, “Opening the conversation will work to destigmatize the topic.”
While the introductory content was helpful to some, others felt like the meeting could have gone deeper into mental health concerns. Reese Wilten ‘22 said, “The talk felt a little like it was directed towards a younger audience. Many of us have already been affected by mental health issues, and this felt somewhat elementary. I hope there are meetings that go deeper into how to help our peers. It’s hard to tell when people are struggling.”
This year’s theme, Health and Wellness, was a contributing factor to the programming. Due to COVID-19, students’ mental health has suffered greatly, and will probably continue to be impacted over the next few years. Post said, “Experts are preparing the mental health field for what they are calling the ‘fourth wave’ of the pandemic, which will be how the pandemic has impacted mental health.”