Through activities including art, yoga and tai chi, students at Homewood-Flossmoor High School learned Monday about normalizing conversations about mental health issues, in what organizers hope becomes an annual event.
The event, the first held at the school, was coordinated with the Live Free 999 Foundation, the family foundation honoring late Chicago-native musical artist Jarad Higgins, known as Juice Wrld.
An H-F grad who grew up in Homewood, Higgins died Dec. 8, 2019, six days after his 21st birthday. An autopsy showed he died accidentally from an overdose of oxycodone and codeine.
Called Shatter the Silence, the full-day event had about 2,700 students at the school participate in talks and hands-on activities touching on subjects including stress, anxiety, depression and suicide.
Jen Rudan, director of student support at the Flossmoor school, said the event was meant to “bring awareness to mental health and let students know it’s OK to talk about it.”
Through the collaboration with Live Free 999 Foundation and H-F’s Bring Change to Mind organization, the sessions were intended to “destigmatize the discussion about mental health,” Rudan said.
She said teens are “already very aware of their mental health,” and that H-F wanted “to provide them with proper outlets to process their feelings and that it’s normal to have ups and downs.”
Following her son’s death, Carmela Wallace established Live Free 999, a nonprofit intended to “support programs that provide preventive measures and positive avenues to address mental health challenges and substance dependency.”
She said Monday she had a vision of pop-up mental health therapy sessions, and said the H-F event was an incarnation of that.
“They are pioneers,” she said of the school organizers. “I don’t think many schools do what they do.”
Wallace said her foundation recruited the presenters, many of whom are from the Flossmoor and Homewood and have received grants through the foundation.
Students took part in one session, spread among the school day in several rooms at the school, in place of their regular physical education class.
Lauren White, a social worker at the school, said students did not feel forced into it.
“I feel like everybody is in good spirits about it,” she said.
White said she has been a school social worker for 15 years.
“People talk a lot about mental health and it’s all talk, and we are putting action behind it,” she said.
Holly Houston, a psychologist with the Anxiety and Stress Center, with offices in Homewood and Orland Park, spoke about anxiety and stress. She said she has two adult children who graduated from H-F.
Stress can include things such as academic demands, getting into a college and gender identity, she said.
Stress and anxiety can lead to physical issues such as headaches, body pain and loss of sleep. Houston admitted to students that she had a bit of anxiety just thinking about her presentation to them.
“I lost a little sleep,” Houston said.
Sometimes they can lead to isolation, where “you create an echo chamber, where negativity bounces back at us,” she said.
Anxiety and stress can result in poor sleep patterns, she said. Houston cited Mayo Clinic research estimating that up to 70% of teens have sleep challenges and inadequate sleep.
Students were advised to avoid screens such as phones and computers at least an hour before going to bed, and to try relaxation techniques such as meditation and yoga before bedtime.
Students were told that having a good social support system including family and friends can “function as a buffer against stress, anxiety, depression and isolation.”
Stickers with QR codes were given to students, and scanning the code provided information about resources in the community for help dealing with mental health issues.
While H-F already incorporates aspects of student mental health into its curriculum, including annual evaluations, the event was meant to help students beyond high school.
“They are not always going to be in our four walls, but they can see what resources are available” in the community, Carla Erdey, a district spokeswoman, said.
Wallace last year opened Homewood Brewing as a testament to her son, where there are touches of Jarad Higgins all around.
In the entry, floor tiles say “Be perfectly imperfect,” a snippet of lyrics from a song by Higgins. There is a wall-size mural on a second-floor patio of him.
Higgins’ music career took off after he gained support from freestyling on his high school’s radio show, according to a 2018 Chicago Tribune profile.
He landed a $3 million deal with Interscope Records, according to the article, and in 2019 was one of two artists chosen by fast-food chain McDonald’s to be part of a philanthropic campaign, representing their hometowns by partnering with a local charity and performing concerts.
His posthumously released final album, “Legends Never Die,” was the No. 1 album in the United States for two consecutive weeks, according to an August 2020 Tribune article.
