Over 30 Lower Sixth attended a talk with Aadarsh Gautam, aka. Hyphen, a music artist and mental health spokesperson who has been featured in the Evening Standard, Metro and BBC talking about his experiences with mental health. His talk focused on stress, anxiety, self-harm, depression and supporting friends with suicidal thoughts. It followed the story of Hyphen’s life from his first experiences with depression at the age of sixteen, through to dealing with suicidal thoughts and the loss of friends to suicide in his early twenties and finally, finding optimism.
He is uniquely well placed to talk to young people about dealing with their mental health given his reach on TikTok (with over 1.5 million likes), his performances at world-renowned events such as Reading and Leeds festival and the popularity of his music which has been streamed over 300k times.
Following Hyphen’s talk, Epsom College PSD donated £250 to charity, YoungMinds. The fundraising team said: ” Thank you so much for your kind donation to YoungMinds, this will make an incredible difference to our work supporting children and families affected by mental health problems. Despite the growing recognition of the mental health crisis in young people, help sadly remains much too difficult to find for many children and families. We are leading the fight for a future where all young minds are supported and empowered, whatever the challenges. We achieve this by providing expert knowledge through our free and confidential Parents Helpline, participation with young people, professional training, work in schools and ensuring mental health is placed firmly on the public and political agenda.”
