Behavioral Health Task Force is comprised of concerned citizens and organizations in western Hillsborough County focused on educating and promoting local resources for prevention, treatment and recovery from Substance Use Disorders and Behavioral Health Challenges. Part of the effort to educate and promote resources was a monthly article focusing on various mental health and substance use related topics. After a brief COVID-19 related hiatus, Be the Change is active in the community again, and this is the first of a series of articles that will be published in the Health section every month. Thank you to the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript for allowing this to be a platform to share, educate, and promote.

For our first installment, we asked a group of school-aged children to write on a topic that they wanted to share about and that was important to them. The article below was written by Scarlett Rogers, who was at the time, a sixth grade student at South Meadow School in Peterborough. Be the Change wanted to restart the monthly column with Scarlett’s piece, given its level of honesty and the impact it had on the members of the Task Force.

We all have anxiety, we all get anxious, but some of us get a lot more anxious than others. It’s normal to get anxious before giving a speech, going on a stage, or even just before a football game. What’s not regular anxiety is to run out of a classroom because it’s too stressful being there.

There are a few things our community could do to help lessen the bad stigma around anxiety. One would be for people to educate themselves about it. The more you know, the more you can educate others on it. Also, if you know more about it, then you can be more understanding if anyone you know ends up having bad anxiety.

Another thing that would help is listening. A lot of parents or other authority figures assume that when a child says that they are feeling anxious, they are just anxious and don’t have anxiety. Some of those adults are correct, but some aren’t. If someone (especially a child) tells you (even if you are another kid) try to be understanding and listen to them instead of just brushing it off or ignoring them.

For more information on supporting youth with anxiety, visit https://childmind.org/topics/anxiety/ [childmind.org] .