Youth Ambassador Illustrates the Power of Art in Mental Health
ICAN Youth Mental Health Ambassador Gabby Dudek loves where art and mental health meet! For her project with us for our anti-stigma campaign, she worked collectively with other local high school students to make original art… with some great results!
Gabby is a sophomore from Whitesboro and attends Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) at OHM BOCES. P-TECH focuses on leadership and getting you ready for your future.
She does indoor and outdoor track (she is a thrower who just got her shot put PR at Sectionals!) She also likes taking part in musicals and in her free time enjoys art, baking and hanging out with friends. She is planning to attend The Project Fibonacci STEAM experience this summer.
Her biggest strengths are listening to and including people, and she plans to use those skills to go into the Human Services field to help others. She will attend Mohawk Valley Community College her junior year to pursue her Associates Degree while she’s in high school.
About Stop ‘N Sketch
Squares were created by Gabby and our Marketing Team and high school students were invited to take one and draw – anything they wanted, with any medium they wanted – to express themselves through art! On the back of the cards, they recorded how they were feeling when they worked on it. Gabby, who has a keen interest in the intersection of art and mental health, did both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the 48 submissions.
Planning out the project:
The biggest benefit of doing these projects is that the Youth Mental Health Ambassadors had to be creative in coming up with the project and pitch it to ICAN staff, but they also needed to drill down the logistics, timelines and overall project management to make it come to life.
To get the project off the ground, Gabby first sent an introductory email to the principals of P-TECH and Whitesboro, giving the details and purpose behind the project.
P-TECH principal Christina Warner got back to her right away, and over email and in-person, they discussed how and when they would get the project out to students. It was decided that it could be done during lunch periods that week. With the help of the weekly announcements, they were able to get going!
Whitesboro High School's social worker Mia Townsend reached out to Gabby and said she would like to help out as well! They coordinated drop off and pick up, and Gabby was able to get cards drawn at both schools!
Forging relationships with school leadership was important and even physically getting the cards themselves from the printer, to ICAN, to Gabby and out to the schools took some planning! Gabby is very appreciative and thankful of everyone’s ability to reach out to her quickly to help me out with my project!
Gabby helped coordinate the small groups to work together during lunch periods and was able to walk around to different tables and talk to students about their thoughts about their project and about their mental health challenges and tactics. Students told her how “they liked the idea and how it was interesting” and “how they liked the material of the card for drawing on”. Some of her friends told her “they enjoyed the opportunity to get to draw together”.
By the numbers:
Forty eight cards came back to Gabby. There was a total 169 emotions reported on them, with just over half (54%) sharing that they felt happy while making the art. Total positive feelings logged in at 82 and negative feelings at 81, making it a pretty even 50/50 split with how the artists were feeling. The top feelings were Happy (26), Calm (18), Sleepy/Tired (14) and Anxious (13). Stressed and Overwhelmed were close behind with 8 each, and HYPE! garnered 9 responses and Grateful also clocked in at 7.
What the artwork showed Gabby:
Gabby’s personal observations are a combination of talking with students in person as they were drawing and also spending time looking at the drawings and feelings once they were all in to her. Not one drawing was the same!
She noted that a majority of people felt happy and calm during and after drawing. Even if the student was not into the project at first, the simple fact that they were making ART turned their mood around a little bit. The kids were automatically happier because they were taking a break from classes, testing and being stressed.
And you can see the stress in the artwork! A lot of squares that indicated the student was anxious or stressed, red ink was used! Red often represents love, passion and strength, but can also indicate “warning!”
There was a lot of blue and yellow used throughout the drawings. Blue was mostly used for drawing in the sky and the ocean. The color blue is associated with the feelings of sadness, trust, loyalty, calmness, knowledge, power, healing, and understanding.
The color yellow was used quite a bit to draw suns. The sun can symbolize life, energy, positivity, and clarity. Yellow is often associated with joy, happiness, optimism, positivity, and wisdom.
Water, sun, flowers and stick figures were common symbolism used throughout.
Some students used pencil, some colored pencil or markers.
Art and Mental Health Research
During the project, Gabby took time to do some research into the benefits art provides individuals with their mental health, both for her own growing knowledge and to compare if what she saw locally through this projects corresponds to evidence-based research.
- 45 minutes of doing art is the recommended time for the positive effects to start like lower cortisol, less anxious, more organized.
- Doing art can also increase someone's dopamine which can make them more happy.
- Doing art a little bit each day or every once and awhile can provide youth with positive social and academic benefits long term.
- Mental health disorders have increased exponentially during the pandemic. We saw this with an increased rate of mental health-related emergency department visits among children in 2020.
- “Compared with 2019, the proportion of mental health–related visits for children aged 5–11 and 12–17 years increased approximately 24%. and 31%, respectively.” states the CDC.
- Depression and anxiety in youth increased by more than two thirds during and since COVID.
- Youth suicide attempts and ideation rates increased during COVID with heightened COVID-related stressors.
- Children of families with fewer resources saw higher rates of negative mental health outcomes because of the difficulties to have online mental health resources available at the time.
In conclusion
Youth too are affected by mental health everyday. Art is one of many strategies to help people help with their mental health. Art allows people to express how they feel in many different ways. Art is a very diverse area where one color may mean something to you while it means something to someone else. So next time you do an art piece, maybe think a little bit and do the colors or symbols have any meaning? I hope reading this article gives you a little bit of insight into youth and their mental health.