“I’ve lived with mental illness my entire life. Its really weird having a disease that nobody can see. A lot of people who have mental illness face a lot of stigma against it, and that makes it really hard to live with mental illness or to cope with it on a daily basis. I’ve lost friends who I’ve told that I have a mental illness. People treat you differently because they think, ‘Oh you’re crazy, you’re gonna do something bad or something’ but that’s not what mental illness is, it just means that I may see things in a different way than other people do. And people face a lot of stigma, even if it’s not their fault. I feel like people talk a lot about trying to get people to talk about mental illness. I see chapel speeches and stuff, and that’s awesome, like Tara Boyle’s chapel speech. I feel like what would even help more is if we got a good discussion going, like people actually did something about helping their friends with mental illness. Even if means just a simple ‘Are you okay?’. Being a good listener for somebody who’s struggling. You know, even just trying to identify if you think someone is struggling or not, that can really help and make a huge difference.”