Welcome to Nexus’s November issue on Mental Health Identity! We are pleased to be collaborating with ISM’s Mental Health Awareness Club on a topic that is of great significance today.

When we talk about mental health, we are referring to the state of someone’s emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Identity is the sense of who one is, based on the experiences, beliefs, personality traits that make a person who they are. Through this month’s theme and meeting, writers were encouraged to contemplate on the significance of mental health and identity according to their areas of interest and perspectives.

Our writers have produced an excellent variety of articles ranging from the implications of social media to the effects of current college acceptance rates on mental health. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did, and hope everyone has had an amazing first semester -- we will see you next year!

Aarushi Kaushik, Editor-in-Chief

Niyanthri Arun, Managing Editor

Articles

Meet November's Writer of the Month: Maia!

The Writer of the month is chosen based on the following criteria:

i) frequency of active participation in monthly issues

ii) attendance in meetings (or letting us know of your absence beforehand)

iii) timely sharing of article ideas (or asking questions if you need help)

iv) timely submissions of the first draft, proper resolution of edits

v) overall writing style/quality 

It gives us great pleasure to announce that our first Writer of the Month is Maia Ramos, a senior! Some Q&A:

What are your areas of interest?

I have a lot of interest areas like children’s rights, sociology, or anything related to gender, race, and other sociocultural norms and institutions. My advocacies are mostly for children’s education and development, media freedom, mental health, women’s and LGBT rights and most recently, I’ve been getting into sustainability.

What are your favorite subjects in school?

My favourite subjects are English Lit and Art! Sometimes they can be really difficult but I love learning more about the subject and being in discussions about the works we create or study.

Why did you choose to write your article Why has it gotten so hard to foster self-esteem, self-worth and identity expression as teenagers? for this month’s theme?

I chose to write about my topic for this month because I noticed how so many people, including myself, struggle with self esteem sometimes, and I wanted to learn more about different sociocultural factors that affect this. I wanted to learn about what exactly is making people feel this way, and how we can overcome this by firstly knowing that self-esteem issues are not really about us, but what we are surrounded by and conditioned to think.

What’s a fun fact about you?

A super random fact about me is that I love matcha. I have them all the time, like I basically breathe matcha at this point and I’ve been told it takes like grass but I’ll always defend it lol.