“As the semester is winding down, I’ve noticed three consistent moods among people graduating on May 20: full acceptance that they’re graduating, half-acceptance and half-denial that they’re graduating or the joking thought that graduating on May 20 is the plan.”

“If you’re an early bird, which means you enjoy getting up before the sun, you get to live longer. If you’re a night owl, meaning you thrive after 9 p.m. and before the sun rises, you need to visit the doctor more and get a mental health evaluation. Good thing there are no studies condemning permanently exhausted pigeons, or people who feel tired all the time. I’m off the hook, then. As a former night owl who still has mental illness, though, this news does disturb me.”

"If you believe hard enough, get some strength – physical and mental – and have a positive mental attitude, you too could become an amazing athlete and a Hollywood star. Or whatever you want to be. Mental illness can’t be any more complicated than that, according to these articles. It’s the journalistic version of the parental “you’ll grow out of it” advice; except, since we’re dealing with mental illness here, this implicit advice is very dismissive of a real issue."

"Social media is bad for you. Social media is ruining humanity. Social media is divisive. I’m sure we’ve heard people say this or at least seen headlines about it. Facebook, one of the rulers of social media itself, has also recently admitted that social media poses mental health risks for many of its users. While social media has its downsides, such as easily allowing hate groups to form and flourish like on Steam, this generalization is just way too dangerous ­– especially for people with mental illnesses."

"It was my freshman year of high school. Nov. 1, 2010. I remember sitting in a row towards the back in the dimly lit theater when the news was announced. One of the seniors had been shot over the weekend at a Halloween house party and died shortly after in Ben Taub Hospital in Houston, Texas. There would be counseling services available throughout the day to anyone who needed them and funeral arrangements would be announced shortly.