Healing words: How Meera Varma learned the language of mental health

In English, her first language,Meera Varma has found the words to advocate for mental health at the White House, at school board meetings in her hometown of Burbank, on UCLA ’s campus and as a youth ambassador for Lady Gaga’s Born This Way foundation.Her words have had an impact. They led Burbank schools to print the number of a suicide prevention hotline on all grade 6 –12 student ID cards and to Varma, 22, being named to the board of the Friends of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, where she advises members on new mental health education programs for youth. But reaching members of her local Indian community, including older members of her family, was always a challenge for Varma, especially in high school. Because of the language barrier, she couldn ’t properly explain the daily anxiety attacks she was having in class or, later, her thoughts of suicide. Google Translate provided little help.“There wasn’t even a word for ‘stigma’ in Hindi, so I didn’t have those conversations growing up,” said Varma, who earned her bachelor’s in psychology at UCLA in 2022 and is now pursuing graduate studies in psychology on campus. “I was experiencing a lot of mental health challenges, but I didn’t have any words to express it.” She would eventually overcome that hurdle, but it wasn ’t before she first gained a better understanding of her own experience of mental illness. While looking at potential universities during high scho...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news