Szabo chokes depression
Ross Szabo presenting “What Happy Faces Are Hiding: Talking About Depression”
One in 10 college students in the United States confronts depression or mental illness. Ross Szabo was one of them.
Szabo, now an award-winning campus speaker, will be discussing his ongoing personal battle against mental health issues at Mt. SAC on May 13 in Building 9C from 1-2 p.m.
“The older generation was quiet about mental illness,” Szabo said. “It is time for us to stop losing to old ways of dealing with mental health issues and start winning the battle.”
Szabo is the director of Youth Outreach for the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign and has made appearances on CNN, MTV and CBS. He has also been featured in “Parade” and “Seventeen” magazines sharing tools for understanding depression and anger.
Livier Martinez, a mental health physician at the Mt. SAC Health Center, said that Szabo’s presentation of “What Happy Faces Are Hiding: Talking About Depression” is important to attend because his experiences reflect many students’ experiences, either personally or with a friend or family member dealing with depression or anger.
“What better way to increase awareness, than by being able to attend a good presentation, or a lecture by someone you can relate to?,” Martinez said. “It’s mental illness. It’s not a fun topic. There are still a lot of stigmas attached to mental illness, and I think that Ross will be able to connect on that level. To de-stigmatize.”
Szabo said that stereotypes about depression and mental health issues, in combination with lack of communication, are what need to change.
“Stereotypes prevented me from telling people that I was having trouble,” Szabo said. “I wanted to fit in as a teenager and I felt that people would view me as weird or weak if I admitted that I could not deal with my problems. Thinking like this almost killed me.”
Martinez said that the event will be open to students, staff and faculty.
“I think that it’s important, especially for students on the campus, to see that even if they are afflicted with a mental illness, it doesn’t mean that that’s the end of them,” Martinez said. “It means that they could still go on to be productive, to get an education, to have a job, to have a functional relationship, to be as healthy as possible by being aware of your mental illness and medication and what you need to do to take care of yourself.”
For more information call the Student Health Center at 909-594-5611 ext. 4400 or visit www.campuspeak.com/speakers/szabo
-Ray Peregrina
