Hi everyone! I’m Mallory Karnei, a senior at the University of Mary Washington where I’ve been studying History and Secondary Education. I am technically from Maryland considering I have lived there for nearly eight years now, but I was originally born and raised in Sterling, Virginia. I moved to Pasadena, Maryland before the start of my freshman year of high school and have now lived in Kent Island, Maryland for about three years.
I decided to take this specific class due to the relevancy of mental health in society and the importance of mental health awareness. I have always been very intrigued in psychology and have yet to have the opportunity to see its progression throughout history. This class ultimately seemed like a great blend between history and psychology. I also have taken an interest of mental health in schools, considering I want to be secondary teacher. I have always wanted to have a better understanding of mental health and how it was either advocated or shunned and how that could possibly reflect onto education and students today.
To me, mental health means the same as any other health. For example, physical health is the wellbeing and maintenance of one’s body. Similarly, mental health is the wellbeing and maintenance of the most important organ in one’s body. I have also come to step away from the taboo side of mental health that used to be extremely present in society – the ignorance, the assumptions, the labeling, etc. That is because mental health has come to personally impact me and my family, allowing me to be able to openly talk about mental health in the same way someone would talk about a broken leg.
I am hoping that this class will challenge and add perspective to the modern portrayal of mental health. Whereas it is far more accepted in today’s age, it was not in the past, and I’m curious to see why that was the case. Why were people so frightened of something they did not understand? Why were so many treated so poorly due to that fear? How can what we’ve seen in the past, help us be better about mental health in the future? I’m hoping this class will help to answer some of those questions.
