Seize Your Opportunities: Student Advocacy in Hong Kong

As a student in GSIS, I feel that there has not been nearly enough emphasis on mental health in our community, especially as it is quite academically rigorous. Knowing this, I applied to be part of the GSIS student representative team that would participate in the inter-school Well-being Symposium hosted by Kellett School. In doing this, I was hoping that I would be able to learn more about the potential steps that we, as individuals and as part of the school community, could take towards destigmatising mental health issues and alleviating some of the stresses that students experience in their everyday lives. I was also aiming to form some connections with students from other schools, as I feel that it is always beneficial as well as exciting to meet and communicate with those that genuinely share my interest in mental health. In discussing mental health-related ideas with them, my goal was to take back something useful that I could implement with the rest of the representative team in order to help GSIS progress in this area.

Participating in the Symposium was a rewarding, eye-opening experience for me and the three other students from GSIS who went. One of the most memorable parts of the Symposium was the talk about stress and emotions conducted by Jared Cooney Horvath (PhD, MEd), an expert at Harvard in neuroscience. His talk was one of the most inspiring and engaging I have ever heard; Dr Horvath was an excellent speaker and broke down the topic in a simple yet fascinating way. The best thing about it was that he explained and elaborated about stress in a way that I had never seen done before. I was not expecting this at all and was pleasantly surprised, as the many experts I had heard speak before had always put the idea of stress in a negative light, proceeding to list out methods on how to avoid or reduce it. Dr Horvath, however, broke stress down into the science behind it and its chemical components using a humorous analogy, which was effective in making it appear less of a monster to tackle for the students listening. I learned that:

• Our initial physical reactions to things are interpreted into feelings, and how we interpret them is up to our discretion

• Emotions refer to the physical sensations that happen in the body in response to something, and are driven by internal chemicals. Feelings are our psychological interpretation of these sensations.

• Stress is a feeling, not an emotion, and can be rationalised. For an event to be stressful, it has to be interpreted as such.

• Cortisol is the primary stress hormone, and when stress begins, it enters into the hippocampus (a region of the brain) and attacks neurons.

• The "attack" stimulates release of norepinephrine, which signals to the amygdala the need for a defence system

• The amygdala releases ARC-proteins into the hippocampus, and they start to combat the cortisol

• This "fight" between the cortisol and ARC-proteins triggers the release of FGF2, a protein that embeds itself throughout the hippocampus

• As the stressful situation is ending, cortisol leaves the hippocampus and ARC-proteins start to repair the damaged neurons, making them stronger than they were before

• Approximately 2 weeks later, FGF2 comes to fruition and new neurons sprout throughout the hippocampus. The new neurons immediately start to process new information (learn)

• If moderate stress was experienced every day, one would have new neurons constantly growing. As they would be tasked with processing new information, learning would be greatly enhanced.

This was a fascinating talk to watch and listen to, and it clearly made a great impression upon most of the students there. Later on when we broke up into mixed-school groups, there was a constant flow of high-level discussion and brainstorming amongst us. These discussions also made a huge impression on me, because it was fantastic being in a community of students whom I didn't know but were clearly passionate about mental health. I made new connections, and was able to bring back a lot of ideas on what we could implement at GSIS to improve the well-being of our students. The three other students and I have decided to form a Student Well-being Committee, which we would like to use as a platform to put these plans into motion. I did not expect that attending the Symposium would be so rewarding, but I am glad I went because I see it as another step forward to improving the situation of mental health at our school.

For any students who might be reading this review article, I would wholeheartedly recommend that you take up any similar opportunities, such as inter-school events, conferences and seminars, should they be offered to you. They might turn out to be fruitful and engaging, could open up new horizons of learning and advocacy, and best of all, inspire you to be more proactive in seeking ways to use your passions for a cause.