Mind matters: Embracing mental wellness. Mental health. As much as being well physically is of importance, so is being well mentally. In Uganda mental health has not been paid enough attention to, most of the population in Uganda is unaware of how important mental health is. Teenagers going through adolescence are experiencing the diverse challenges of their mental health not given the right amount of urgency as their physical health. The most common mental health disorders are Depression and anxiety, these affect 3.4%of the world’s population as per the world population reveiw. Since we have not raised the issue of mental health as much, many people choose to hide their feelings and the pain they’re going through. This is most common in adolescents at school. As an adolescent you are drawn to be like others, to fit in, to be cool. This creates a terrible environment to learn in, because since everyone is pretending to be okay this gives the idea that “I also must be okay.” Truth is ITS OKAY NOT TO BE OKAY, and by getting that message across it will help many, by assuring them that their feelings are valid and it’s okay for them to feel like that. I have faced mental challenges such as depression and anxiety. To me it was more than just feeling sad. Depression is described as persistent feelings of sadness, while what I was feeling was more than that. Depression is when you lose hope, when you feel like it will never be better, you never expect anything good, and you stop feeling any type of emotion, Depression is when you want to get better so you try to do things you think will make you feel happy/better, but you end up feeling worse. How do we help people like me? By providing the support needed in schools such as having a school Psychologist/Psychiatrist. There are also small changes you can make to improve the mental health of students, such as informing the teachers about mental health through training by professionals. By doing this it will help them interact with the students better. For example, instead of shouting or beating the student when they get a bad grade, the teacher will take the initiative to talk to the student, find out what they did not understand, and encourage them. Schools can also bring in experts to give the students stress management techniques so that when a student feels stress there are ways for them to cope with all the stress. Creating an environment where students can freely speak about how their feeling without being criticized or laughed at. For anyone to have a good mental health they need to be heard, it is very very, and I stress it Very important that students know that they should Speak up and talk to someone, it might not be a professional but a s long as it is someone with experience it will lessen the burden on the student. “A PROBLEM SHARED IS A PROBLE HALVED”