“It’s all fake… you are doing it for attention… it’s nothing just ignore it.” While mental health awareness is a relatively new issue, mental illnesses have a long and illustrious history. Mental illnesses, often known as mental disorders, are a group of disorders that impact one’s emotions, thinking, and behavior. Many people suffering from mental diseases are now working to raise awareness about disorders such as depression and anxiety. Some say that teaching about mental diseases in schools is the greatest method to educate people about them. Activists hope that by educating students about mental diseases in schools, they may boost awareness of the issue and prevent kids with mental illnesses from feeling alone.
The graphic arts teacher, Ms. Loveras, took her class to MOMA to look at some art pieces, little did they know it was about sleep paralysis. As we walked into the museum we thought we would be walking around and looking at different pieces.
Nicolas Bruno is a photographer that publishes pieces inspired by his sleep paralysis. Nicolas has been going through this since elementary school, but his parents didn’t think it was something real and thought it was his imagination. In middle school, he started his journey with a camera and tried to show what he saw while he is paralyzed. He would keep it to himself until he started high school. That’s when he decided to start publishing it because he realized that he isn’t the only one that is going through this.
Many students go through different mental disorders but no one wants to talk about them because people may worry that they are weird and leave you out after finding out. Jessica DeOcampo, a senior, who also suffers from sleep paralysis, isn’t scared to speak out about it.
“I suffered through it since I was little, it was so scary because I couldn’t move or talk,” said De Ocampo. “Nicolas’s art pieces were so cool because I was able to relate to the person that had cloth on top of their face because there is a person that looks just like that.”
Jessica also suffers from depression, but feels like she can talk about it since it’s an open-top. “When it comes to depression everyone is open to talking about it since it’s a normal thing for most high schoolers, but it feels like other disorders no one talks about, so I was happy when we went to the museum.”
In today’s world, we are starting to talk more about the disorders that people are going through so they are not alone. Going to MOMA that day, really opened my eyes to mental illness that we don’t talk about or know anything about.
