JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – May is mental health awareness month. A Jacksonville organization wants you to help encourage people in your community – by writing words of affirmation on the sidewalk.
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News4JAX grabbed chalk and went to San Marco Square to see if people would take a moment out of their day to write an encouraging message to others.
But sometimes, mental health can be hard to talk about.
For some, it’s easier than others.
A little girl we ran into wrote “love” and ‘happy” and drew a heart on the ground.
“Let’s color a different color. Each side of the heart is going to have a different color,” she said.
When she and her mother walked away, we saw them high-five, and she said that was fun.
We figured if she could do it, so could others.
One man wrote, “never give up”.
A woman who stopped told us “everyone can deserve a little kindness.”
This effort wasn’t our idea.
“You never know how much that might change someone’s day,” said Sheryl Johnson, the President of Hearts4Minds.
They want to spark conversations about mental health.
“The positive messaging is really to start to bridge the gap between people. Mental illness is one of those things, we tend to say, oh, that happens to those people or someone else, or that doesn’t happen. And so the idea is to just find ways to encourage that connection,” Johnson explained.
This connected with a few people we spoke with.
One man wrote “you are not alone”, and we asked why he chose this.
“I had a buddy that passed away from a mental illness. He felt like he was alone all the time, so it was kind of rough.”
The woman who wrote about kindness told us a little goes a long way with working in the customer service industry.
We asked her how she felt about this initiative.
“It’s really encouraging knowing that there’s people in this world who aren’t just, you know, mean every day,” she said.
National Alliance on Mental Health says 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year. Only half of them get treatment. 50% of all lifetime mental illness starts at age 14 and 75% by age 24.
“The statistics are pretty sad,” said Johnson. “So when we learn those signs and symptoms, we can self regulate, we can help the people in our life because we understand the difference between having emotions, or having emotions that interrupts our life that causes us to need help.”
Johnsons said there is help available.
She asks when people write with chalk on the sidewalk, to post a picture of it on social media with the hashtag #ChalkItUp4Life.
You can learn more about the campaign and how you can get involved at www.heartsforminds.org.