By Lara Walder

We’ve seen friends, family and members of this newspaper club being nominated to participate in the ice bucket challenge, which has made a comeback from the once-popular trend back in 2014. Maybe you’ve even been nominated yourself! However, there’s more to it than dumping a bucket of freezing water over your head this time, but why exactly are we doing it? 

What are we doing this for? 

Coming from the University of South Carolina, it seems that this challenge has been created in order to promote mental health awareness, using their slogan “SPEAK YOUR MIND”, to show us exactly what we are doing this for. Talk about campaign strategies, this new means of spreading awareness has really made an impact! Through nominating friends to also participate, it seems that this campaign has managed to reach every corner of the planet and even reached our hometown of Larnaca. 

Therefore, as the University of South Carolina has mentioned, choosing the method of dumping water onto your head is more than just a revamp to the popular challenge in 2014, where ‘just like the shock of cold water, mental health struggles can be sudden and overwhelming’, turning a once meaningless challenge into a symbolic act that creates a greater awareness to the mental battles that we feel unable to express. 

Has this challenge become lost in translation?

However, with the active spreading of this campaign, we can’t help but wonder: is this challenge really spreading awareness, or has it become yet another silly trend? How many people have actually decided to speak out about their mental health because of these campaigns? Well, we hope that through the participation of this campaign and through articles like this one that at least a few of you have gained something; whether it’s validation to be vulnerable about your problems, the awareness to be more empathetic to others, or simply the reminder to ask the people around you how they are, because you truly never know what others are going through.

We believe that this campaign can truly have a great impact on raising awareness on mental health, but we need to make sure that the message of this campaign is getting through and not just the mere challenge. Therefore, the members of the journalism club would like to reinforce this message, advising all of us, especially now that exam season is coming up, to not be scared to be vulnerable and speak about your problems, because YOUR MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS.