A school project on mental health that kept going

It started as a school project in the 2023-2024 school year. Laila Ismail, who lives in Giza and is in MYP3, grade 8, at Greenland Pre Vert International School, worked on it with a partner. The subject was mental health and how to spread awareness of it.

The project was completed. Laila kept going.

“In the society we live in people are seen as weak for expressing emotions no matter the circumstances.”

Laila Ismail

"I still believed I could do more to spread awareness regarding this issue," she says.

What exists today is a set of documents, some of them shared with the partner from the original project. Some consist of "posters and statistics tracking students and staff's mental health." Others, Laila says, are "texts with my school's wellbeing team."

Laila's reasons come from what she sees around her. "Most people in Egypt don't believe mental health is as important as physical health," she says. By her account the pressure falls on women and men differently. Women "are forced to bury their emotions until they break," and are then told that what they are experiencing is normal or expected of them. Men, she says, "believe they are weak if they accept help regarding their mental health."

Laila adds a number to this: "As many as 8 million people die annually due to underlying mental health issues."

The work has now run for a few years past the original assignment.