High School Heroes: Battling the Stigma of Mental Illness one Day at a Time

By Stavi Tennenbaum

EVA ROSENFELD, JUNIOR, and co-editor in chief of Community High School’s nationally acclaimed CHS Communicator newspaper, is an avid reader, artist, Neutral Zone Board leader and widely published journalist. A Google search of her name brings up results from the op-ed sections of the New York Times, NPR, CNN, MLive and the Huffington Post.

Since entering high school, Eva has struggled with chronic depression.

As many as 20 percent of America’s 30 million teens, according to recent data from Mental Health America, suffer from clinical depression. In 2011, one-in-twelve teens aged 14-15 deliberately self-harmed, a coping mechanism commonly utilized by those with severe depression or anxiety.

Despite the prevalence of mental health disorders in the U.S and the high rate of teens who suffer from them throughout their adolescence—an estimated 11 percent of teens experience symptoms of a depressive disorder by age 18—depression is still highly stigmatized. Teens with depression are still commonly thought to be moody, hormonal or problematic.

As a result, a mere one-third of the teens who struggle with mental illness receive the sort of intervention or treatment they may need.

Eva Rosenfeld has dedicated much of her work in the Community High School’s award-winning Communicator newspaper and her social activism to battling the stigma attached to mental illness. She also works to increases the availability of mental health resources for today’s youth.

Q. DIAGNOSIS: When and how were you first diagnosed with depression?

Rosenfeld: I was diagnosed with depression in ninth grade, but started experiencing it a year or two years before then. I only came out about it to my mother freshman year though, upon her prompting, and she connected me to the help that I needed. I was really lucky that she was willing and able to provide me with that. I started seeing a therapist, who diagnosed me, and then a psychiatrist, who medicated me. It was hard for me to be honest about depression for a really long time, but I think once my mom started to notice some symptoms and signs of it for herself, I was finally able to open up to her about it. Before that, though, I was seeing a lot of symptoms affecting my daily life. I was feeling really isolated all the time, experiencing really long intense periods of sadness. I wasn’t really talking about being depressed with anyone, but it was obvious to me.

Q. TREATMENT: What medications were you originally prescribed? How did things change for you after your diagnosis?

Rosenfeld: I was originally prescribed Fluoxetine, also known as Prozac, which is what I’m still on today. That medication helped me a lot—it has really improved my general mood and my daily mood base. Therapy can also be really helpful, depending on the specific situation or time. It’s really just person-to-person, case-by-case…. For me, medication helped, as did finding other people, since being diagnosed, that I could talk to about it, and discovering a lot more open networks where depression is not stigmatized as much. It doesn’t seem as haunting and hopeless a problem as it might have in the past.

There are definitely times where I still dread having to talk to someone about my problems. I’m nervous to confide in someone, or I feel like I’m wasting their time, and the money going into the therapy, or I just feel like I have nothing important to say. There are also times when it can be super helpful to have someone who can help you think about things in a different way. I’ve recently just started going back to therapy, and my therapist was able to connect for me some ways that depression has been impacting my life that I hadn’t really put together myself. I’ve had a lot of depressive periods this year, mostly related to isolation and guilt associated with my identity, and she helped me see how my depression has sort of latched on to other parts of my life that aren’t necessarily bad, and made them seem a lot worse. Depression can grab ahold to certain elements of your life that are vulnerable, and use them to advance its own cause.

Q. MEDICATION: What are some of the effects that depression and being prescribed Fluoxetine have upon your daily life? How has this changed as you’ve gotten older?

Rosenfeld: Having depression is kind of self-evident in the way it affects your life, because you’re depressed, and that can fluctuate or it can be a constant thing, but when I was younger I couldn’t really identify what depression was, so I thought I just was lonely and couldn’t have real connections with people. But when I was able to put a name to it, that was a form of relief for me, because I was able to realize that it wasn’t just me who was wrong, but that there was something affecting me.

Part of why mental health awareness is so important is because if you don’t know what’s happening to you, you have no way to get help, and no explanation for why you feel the way you do. You can just think that you’re doing something wrong as a person. Depression is something that so many people struggle with, so no one should have to believe that they’re the only person that this is happening to, especially when it really is at epidemic rates right now.

Since I’ve gotten the necessary help, even though my depression hasn’t been cured…. I’m able to enjoy the things I care about consistently and don’t always feel like I’m just trying to make it through the day.

Q. THE COMMUNICATOR: What made you want to write an article about depression and other mental illnesses? What was it like compiling the stories of your peers? 

Rosenfeld: I was a managing editor sophomore year, and now I’m one of the co-editors in chief. Last year, co-managing editor Madeline Halpert and I went to a conference in Boston and we roomed together. She saw my medication and happened to have been on the same one herself. So she took a risk in asking me about my depression. It was both of our first experiences opening up to someone our own age about depression. It was therapeutic and a relief for both of us; it alleviated some of the isolation, which is a big element of depression.

So we wanted to spread that message through the Communicator newspaper, to let people know that they’re not struggling alone and of the ways that they can get help. We decided the best way to do this would be to publish, without anonymity, the personal accounts of students from our school, so people could see the extent this has in their own community.

I found that the people themselves were really excited and willing to share their stories about mental illness, even though some of them were very personal, because typically it means a lot for people to be able to tell their stories to someone who wants to listen. People were really supportive of our cause as well, so they wanted to help contribute to that.

Q. PUBLICITY: How did the story of Community’s Dean Jen Hein prohibiting you from releasing the interviews without anonymity reach the New York Times? Where else was the “Depressed, but Not Ashamed” story published? 

Rosenfeld: Madeline and I were really upset when our stories got censored, because we felt like this cause that we were so invested in had just been shut down by an authority figure who had the wrong mentality about mental illness. Dean Jen felt that she had reasons that were very valid to her and that it was her duty to protect students. But we definitely disagreed with her decision, so we contacted different publications, one of which was the New York Times. That was, of course, sort of stretch for us, but they responded that they would be interested in doing so if we sent them a draft that night.

So we sat down and wrote the editorial and sent it; and a few weeks later it was published. The day after that happened we did an interview on NPR with Scott Simon, and later a lot of different people contacted us asking to interview us or for us to write something for their sites or publications.

One of the projects we became really invested in working with was the National Alliance for Mental Illness, helping them design youth services to provide people with  resources for mental health. We also spoke at an event of theirs about our own stories. Madeline and I were later invited to participate on a panel on student rights and free press at the National High School Journalism Conference in Washington, D.C, which featured a bunch of other teen journalists who were all really passionate about their causes.

Q. PUBLICATION: When and where were the mental illness interviews themselves published? What was the reaction to this at Community and throughout Ann Arbor?

Rosenfeld: The story published in the New York Times was about how we were denied the right to publish these personal testimonials about mental illness, but it was more of our broader commentary on how stigmatized of an issue it is that we weren’t even allowed to talk about it in a way that was intended to decrease the stigma. The interviews themselves were later published in Scholastic Choices magazine, and we didn’t use all of the stories. The ones in the original edition had originally been on any mental health condition, ranging from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, homelessness, insomnia, and personal struggle as a whole…They were later picked up by the Huffington Post. That was a complete surprise.

At that point I was glad to have finally had these people’s stories told, because I felt like we’d done them a disservice in not being able to publish them as we’d promised, even though we did, ultimately with the New York Times publication, get their message out to a much broader audience than we would’ve been able to with just our school newspaper.

The publication of the interviews definitely got a lot of attention and stimulated a lot of dialogue, which was all inherently positive. Any discussion about this cause is effective when the cause itself is the silence surrounding an issue. In Ann Arbor specifically, I really hope that our publication did help decrease the stigma behind mental illness, and many people did reach out to us telling us that our story made them feel like they could open up about their depression to their families and friends.

Q. CHANGES: What have you learned from your experiences as a published journalist? How has this affected your own struggle with depression and your view of those around you? 

Rosenfeld: In my own life, writing about the stigma around mental illness certainly has helped me. It was so public; I basically put it out there to the world that I had depression, so now I can’t imagine a situation in which I would ever feel like it’s something I have to hide. I’ve definitely received credibility as a result of that experience, because other people are now a lot more likely to publish my work which—although I have done a lot more writing on mental illness as a result of this whole sequence of events, for other specific sites and publications—in regards to what I go out of my way to write about at school and otherwise nowadays, while I still have a social justice and social change focus, I’ve expanded from just these mental health and ability status issues to broader equality advocacy.

Q. SOCIAL ACTIVISM: What organizations are you a part of outside of school? Which are you most passionate about?

Rosenfeld: In addition to regularly writing and editing for the Communicator, I’m a big part of the Neutral Zone Ann Arbor. I’m on the Board of Directors there and participate in a ton of their programs, such as the Visual Arts Council, the Teen Advisory Council, Students Educating Each other About Diversity (SEED), and Youth Owned Records.

It’s just such an amazing resource for teens in Ann Arbor—basically anyone who’s passionate about something can find their voice and find a place to be a leader at the Neutral Zone. That certainly rings true for me, as I love to do visual arts and have had the opportunity to pursue that there. I’ve also had a lot of eye-opening experiences regarding how I see myself and society at NZ, especially on diversity, through the SEED program. Right now I’m also working on a youth civil rights project with the University of Michigan School of Social Work.

Q. THE FUTURE: What are your post-high school goals? How do you hope to continue the work that you’ve dedicated yourself to through your writing and community involvement? 

Rosenfeld: I really would like to find a way to combine art, journalism and social justice work into a profession that’d be rewarding for me, in a way that would allow me to do what I love while simultaneously making the change I want to see and playing the role I want to play in the world. I feel a lot of responsibility to remain an advocate for the causes I’ve dedicated myself to and want to continue to be vocal and active about them. Most of all I want to keep learning and further my self-education on the way our society operates.

It’s not like I feel depressed every second of every day, or even every day; I definitely did before I’d gotten help. But it’s not like I can ever go a really long time without it hitting me at some point. I know other people who have reached that point, though, and I hope to reach it someday. There are people who have experienced depression, but have gotten to a stage where it no longer impacts their functionality, or just doesn’t play that big a role in their lives.

I wouldn’t say that depression particularly affects my functionality right now. It honestly depends on the period of time: some times are better than others. I’ve been immensely privileged in the resources I’ve had to help me out of the tough spots, and I’m grateful for all of that, and that I have amazing people in my life who really care about me. Overall, I have a lot of really incredible things going on in my life, but that doesn’t really mean much when depression takes over. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen to me that frequently anymore.