MIND YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

By Jacob Bila

On Wednesday, May 12th, mental health and wellness was the topic of the Mind Your Mental Health webinar. FTC Students gathered in the Downbeat Café to listen to speaker Lucas Wolfe from the organization, Minding Your Mind. Wolfe began the discussion of his life-long battle with depression and anxiety by saying, "Before all this, I was just an average Joe that had a happy good life."

According national health issues nonprofit KFF, about four in ten adults in the U.S. reported having symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic, a share that has been largely consistent. This up from one in ten adults who reported these symptoms from January to June of 2019.

Wolfe compared depression to the angel-demon duo on one’s shoulders and reflected on how he never recognized his feelings of emptiness until he was in his sophomore year of high school. These feelings would follow him to college, where at a Penn State University football game he was surrounded by thousands of cheering fans and realized he was suffering inside. Lucas said that at this very football game, he had a near-suicidal experience and considered jumping from the ledge of the highest seats of the stadium.

Determined to find a way to recover, he moved to New Mexico for an internship, thinking