Bullying & Suicide Awareness Fashion Show

In near all demographics throughout the nation, there are surges in depression and suicidal behaviors among all age groups and regions. In response to this growing trend, more and more advocates for mental health awareness have risen in multiple venues to inform and empathize with the people through a multitude of different ways.
Desiree and Erin Green of the Have a Heart Foundation are two such advocates whose purpose is to have open venues of expression in an effort to spread suicide awareness and anti-bullying conversations. When asked how they believed events such as these would be able to help the causes suicide awareness and anti-bullying, freshman criminal justice major Jalyn Mitchells says: “Expression is important for our generation. When we go through things, we get through it by expressing it through different ways. This is just another example of that.”
“I just as recently as last year lost someone to suicide, and I wanted to become an advocate for suicide awareness. I felt like this was the perfect start,” said Jae James, a local fashion designer when asked what drove her to become an advocate for suicide and anti-bullying awareness.
“It started with Jae’s Closet in my freshman year. I started it because I was a really skinny, petite girl, but I was tall and it’s just really hard to find clothes for us,” said James when asked about her journey’s origin and what caused her to begin her journey into fashion. James noted that she expanded her clothing ware to larger sizes as well over recent years.
Although mental health awareness as a whole has progressed immensely in recent years, it has yet to effectively halt the rising number of suicide attempts and bullying occurences that happen in adolescence and academic settings. According to Nique Church, a sophomore biology major, there is no easy fix to these problems in our country: “We can’t look at it like ‘doing this one thing will make a change’; it has to be a constant action and understanding of how the world makes us feel and react to adequately begin addressing solving the suicide and bullying crisis that has overtaken large parts of the country.
Like the advocates in attendance at the Suicide and Anti-Bullying Awareness Fashion Show, it’s the responsibility of individuals to raise awareness to these issues through whichever means is most readily available.