About Me

I'm Yana Patel, a senior in Holliston High School. I am a student with interests and skills in creative work, as I am an avid digital artist. I enjoy telling stories through my art, especially by integrating my own experiences into certain pieces.

Community Need: Mental Health

Student mental health problems are a significant and growing problem as of today. The mental well-being of students impacts their social lives, ability to learn, and their general quality of life. It is crucial to address this issue in an appropriate and effective way.

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A PSA on mental health

Community Needs Pitch - Yana Patel

Mental health education in HHS has not been satisfactory to students, and certain mental health resources are completely unknown to the student body, such as the mental health resources page on the counseling site.

Project Goals

1) Make the mental health resources the school provides more well-known and educate students on how to access them

2) Create spaces where mental health can be openly talked about amongst peers through student discussion

Community Partner

I partnered with Ms. Calais, an adjustment counselor in the guidance department. Adjustment counselors in the school are more of a secondary resource whom students can go to if they need more help than can be provided by their guidance counselor.

Yana Patel On Tackling Mental Health at HHS Through Service LearningBy Sara Buckley Editor In Chief Senior Yana Patel is tackling mental health in a new way at Holliston High School through her Service Learning Project, which is designed to engage students in conve…

Student to Student held open, student-led discussions to go further into the issue of mental health, and how students felt about how it was being managed. Ms. Calais assisted in organizing these meetings, and she was someone who I spoke with afterward to go over the results of these discussions.

Points that many students shared included:

Portrayal of a broader perspective on mental health instead of singular perspectives
Group discussions with other students
Time in classrooms to destress

The discussions were held on November 2nd, 9th, and the 16th. Student to Student also sent out a survey to all class Google Classrooms to ask for student input on the state of mental health education in HHS.

Posters directing students to the Mental Health Resources page of the HHS School Counseling website were also hung around the school.

An article about this project was published in the HHS newspaper.

A visual novel-style video was also created as a way to send the message of talking more with peers about mental health-related issues.

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