If you weren’t aware, May has been observed as Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States since 1949. The color green is the official color for mental health awareness. If you work in a college or high school, you certainly understand that our youth go through many new challenges with social media and societal pressure. As mental health awareness has become more and more a part of our everyday lives in America, it’s important to be mindful and help to spread awareness throughout the year. Just because May is considered Mental Health Awareness Month doesn’t mean we can’t help do our part all year long!
We help provide entertainment, events, and educational programming for colleges and high schools around the country. With over 30 years of experience working in the college and high school space, we have come to understand the needs and wants that student activity planners and other professionals have, and we aim to provide solutions.
Today on the blog, we wanted to go over a few categories of mental health that students go through, and how we can help!
Academic Stress Effects Students
One key contributor to students’ mental health struggles is academic stress. Whether the student is at the top or bottom of their class, it’s not easy to balance all the work that school brings. Whether a student is trying to get their grades as high as possible to get into the college that they dream of, or a student is trying their best to get into a graduate school program, the workload and stress is real, and students deserve to have aspects of their education that aren’t all stress.
We pride ourselves on helping to provide relief to students all over the country with fun, engaging, and entertaining programs that help relieve stress. We also found that providing schools and colleges with stress relief programs has certainly helped ease the tension of the end of the school year, with exams and finals, as well as orientation programs that help introduce students to college, which can be a stressful time!
Substance Abuse, Stress & Social Pressures
Alcohol, drugs, and other substances like nicotine have a major effect on students’ mental health. Since the dawn of America, Experimentation, social peer pressure, the need to fit in, and trying to be “cool” have always been tied in with using things like beer, pot, cigarettes. The products may have changed over the last few decades, but the pressure remains the same. Today, students struggle with avoiding participation in things like vaping, edibles, and binge drinking. The term “microdosing” has become a popular term for using a small amount of a substance, without it being too negative on a student’s life, but this is still a path toward mental health struggles.
HS and college students deserve to know what effects making the right or wrong choice can have on their lives, before it does. This is why we have always created and provided talented speakers who can help to reach students in a way that’s fun and engaging, not boring and strict. We feel that topics like alcohol awareness and human connection & engagement can help foster healthy relationships that don’t require a buzz to feel confident and communicate with new friends.
Sexuality Can Be Stressful!
Regardless of whether a student is straight, gay, bisexual, assexual, lesbian, etc, they will struggle at some point throughout their teenage years with sexuality. This is a part of growing up, but with so much confusion in today’s world, it can be challenging for any person to fully understand their feelings, let alone speak to someone about them. What’s right for someone could be wrong for someone else, and there is not always somewhere or someone to turn to to tell your truth.
This is also the case with the unfortunate reality of sexual assault. Sexual assault can have a drastic impact on a young person’s mental health for a very long time. Fortunately, over the last few years, the topic has become less stigmatized, and people are speaking up about their story.
We have a great assortment of powerful entertainers who bring light to the challenges of being a member of the LGBGQ+ community. Seeing individuals represent themselves with honor, dignity, and even the ability to laugh can help students feel more comfortable in their own skin, and hopefully, inspired to represent themselves with pride!
Read More: How to Cope with Your Mental Health as an LGBTQ Student
With sensitive topics, it can be challenging to reach students, but that’s what we’ve always aimed to do here at Neon. We understand that students face specific, difficult challenges on an individual level, we wouldn’t ever pretend that we are psychologists or mental health experts by any means, but if we can help just one kid through a tough time with our powerful and engaging mental health programs, that means a lot to us, and that’s why we’ve always tried to do so.
Check out some of our speaker programs like S.A.R.A., Pure Praxis, Party S.M.A.R.T., and Zero Shades of Gray to get an idea of some of the programs we provide for high schools and colleges throughout the year. We hope you had a great May and wish you all the best in a healthy and happy rest of your 2025!
