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Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:49
Ross Szabo : A Voice for Mental Wellness
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So this is a conversation to open up the Swell waves, to really dig into who Ross is, how he came to be, the person he is, but also how we, as a community can really keep this conversation at the forefront and just make mental wellness as cool as pop culture, as cool as sports make it something that is integrated into all those things so that we can all stay healthy and be the best version of who we are in the days that we have on this beautiful planet of ours, this aching planet of ours
Ross Szabo
@RossSzabo · 2:45
So I'm always happy to talk about my own personal experiences with these issues and what people should know about depression and suicidality and mental health issues and coping skills. I'm a huge fan of how do you cope? How do you wire your brain? How do you take care of that? The other thing that I'm really passionate about is changing the education system around mental health. So I'm a founding faculty member and the wellness director at Geffen Academy at UCLA
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:48
Testimonials of those who have used your work to really change and shift people's mindset around the issue of mental health. I want to ask you a question about the adoption of your work initially, and I bring this up because when sex education was brought into the school systems in the Seventies, there was incredible resistance because the people who were about to help disseminate the information were themselves uncomfortable with talking about this topic
Ross Szabo
@RossSzabo · 2:44
We did a lot of information sessions, so we had buy in from the parents as swell. And then when the students started getting the information, I would say that there was a big adjustment for them because going to school and now having to talk about your feelings and your emotions and learning about mental health was a switch for them. It did help that I was able to speak to them about my personal experiences because it normalized mental health for them
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:59
Thanks for asking. You bring up a really interesting point about the sort of the timeline of students adjusting to the overtness of this conversation. And it brings me pause because I'm wondering from your perspective, and I know you're going to tell me this in the curriculum, so I'm excited to hear this. Is there an end game to these conversations? And what I mean by that is when you were diagnosed with bipolar disease
Ross Szabo
@RossSzabo · 3:19
People who go through trauma. People who go through difficult life experiences throughout their life may need more support than somebody who isn't in that same situation. So I would say that the goal is to educate mental health from a public health perspective the same way we teach physical health. And that is what makes the curriculum and also my school replicable. If the ultimate goal was to diagnose people or to treat people well, that's not replicable. Other schools can't do that
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:48
It's really exciting that this is just growing from that model, from that that other health model and being applied for mental health. Recently, the press has really leaned into this conversation conversation with Simone Biles, with Nama Saka. And then earlier, a couple of years ago with The Weight of Gold documentary kind of spearheaded by Michael Phelps. And when you see things like that kind of pop up on the radar of journalists, I'm sure it ripples back to you, I guess. Does it help?
Ross Szabo
@RossSzabo · 2:12
Yeah, that's a really great question. The headlines and a lot of celebrities or athletes or other people coming out with their own stories definitely does help normalize mental health health. And over the past decade, we've seen so many examples of it. This last year has been full, like you said of Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles. The NFL is currently doing this huge mental health push. I don't use their stories in my curriculum, and I maybe reference it occasionally in the classroom
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:43
Hey, Ross, I'm really, really glad you brought up Tik Tok, because it's going to round out this conversation so well for me to get your perspective on the presence of mental wellness as a conversation in social media. There's a conversation going on right now on Swell that I posted about psychologist who was worried about clubhouse and the false intimacy. There are people really opening up and then having no place to go afterwards. And I'll post that link here
Ross Szabo
@RossSzabo · 1:57
Yeah. That's a great question, Deborah. A utopian vision. It's definitely not something that I can work towards on my own, right. So for me, it is changing education system, obviously, again, having students learn about their mental health the same way they learn about their physical health. And then what that would require is teachers being trained, schools being traumainformed, help existing for all of these kids. Right?
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:40
And I think this platform in terms of hearing your voice and your tone and sharing my thoughts and kind of moving into territory I'm not completely versed in has been really helpful for me, and it really expanded my sense of what's going on right now in the classroom. So it's really inspiring. So I just want to thank you for initiating this conversation with me, and let's see where it goes
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