Suicide plagued my adolescent years. In my twenty-two years, I have seen the effects of suicide fourteen times. In the seventh grade, I watched from a distance as the train schedule remained unchanged in spite of the numerous battles lost to mental illness on the tracks across from my school. I watched as close friends and I lost loved ones, as counseling programs were hastily put together, and as students with three degrees of separation from Chris, my lifelong friend, spoke as though his death meant nothing because it was “self-inflicted.”After the death of Zach, a young family friend who lost his father to the same illness, I knew I needed to do more than simply try to make people feel as though they matter. I felt compelled to make an impact on the community. I joined Active Minds and actively work to de-stigmatize mental illness as a titleholder in the Miss America Organization who speaks to service organizations, high school students, and Delaware’s Behavioral Health Consortium. What I had not anticipated was the amount of knowledge I would gain about the mental health community and the challenges it faces. My campaign enlightened me to greater issues against the …show more content…
Real world problems cannot be confronted by one specialty alone. Upon graduation from this program, I intend to matriculate into law school and use my Master of Arts in Developmental Psychology and Juris Doctorate to effect change. A master’s degree in developmental psychology is integral to this plan, as I believe developmental psychology is underutilized. Perhaps the reason for the lack of understanding of suicide is due to the frequent use of clinical and behavioral approaches. Interpersonal processes undoubtedly have an effect and could be essential to developing policy that would affect counseling programs and education programs for parents, maybe at the onset of back to school