Free Your Mind Mental Health Society is a youth-led grassroots not-for-profit organization based in Calgary. Free Your Mind was founded by four youth who are passionate about mental health awareness and advocacy.
One in five Canadian youths will experience a serious mental health struggle in any given year, and only a quarter of them will receive the help they need and deserve.
Stigma prevents struggling youth from seeking help, and our founders are determined to change that. Free Your Mind draws on the power of real, young voices and amplifies them. We speak out about mental health through social media, blogging, and community events.
Two years ago, Jenny Li founded Free Your Mind. At the time, Jenny was only 17 years old. Free Your Mind was never meant to be an ongoing program, much less a society. Jenny, who had suffered from mental health complications for over a decade, only wanted to build a team and host an event for mental health education. Jenny had previously been involved as a volunteer and interviewee with the Speak Your Mind Project, a photography and blog program that has since been incorporated as a program within Free Your Mind.
Jenny’s struggle with poor mental health began at the age of 5. At that time, their family immigrated from China. Jenny was often bullied for their looks and their way of speaking. Their classmates picked on them for their broken English and the shape of their eyes. Jenny continued to suffer through junior high, where they struggled through two years of constant sexual harassment. While they didn’t know it at the time, Jenny suffered from depression and two anxiety disorders. Along the way, Jenny learned the value of resilience and turned their painful experiences into the desire to do good. Now, Jenny works hard to overcome their troubles and to embrace who they are, including their non-binary gender identity.
In June of 2019, the founders of Free Your Mind planned, organized, and completed Project Mindfulness, the mental health event that Jenny wanted to see. Within two years, Free Your Mind evolved from a one-time project into a registered not-for-profit.
Free Your Mind continues to plan Project Mindfulness and hopes it will be an annual event, hosted every summer in Calgary.
Free Your Mind has also incorporated the Speak Your Mind Project as one of its core programs. Speak Your Mind is a blog and photography campaign, aiming to break the stigma surrounding mental health on social media. To read blogs and interviews relating to the topic of mental health, visit Speak Your Mind Project’s website, Instagram, and Facebook.
Free Your Mind is currently recruiting for various Director positions for the Events Team and for the Speak Your Mind Program. Free Your Mind is also recruiting bloggers for Speak Your Mind on an on-going basis. For more information on how to be involved, click here!
For more information, check out Free Your Mind’s website, Instagram, and Facebook.
Photos: courtesy of Free Your Mind Mental Health Society
