Mental health. Two words that make people uncomfortable. Two words often whispered rather than spoken. Two words that carry stigma, misunderstanding, and silence especially in educational settings where students are expected to be resilient, focused, and perpetually fine.
But what if they’re not fine? What if the pressure to perform is crushing them? What if the stigma around mental health is preventing students from seeking help they desperately need?
In 2025, HIECH Foundation decided to break the silence. “HIECH in My School” became a nationwide tour with one mission: educate students about mental health awareness. Make the invisible visible. Start conversations that could save lives.
Three schools. Three regions. Three hundred students. One crucial conversation.
Why Mental Health? Why Now?
Mental health issues among young people are rising globally, and Ghana is no exception. But while other health issues receive attention and resources, mental health remains in the shadows misunderstood, stigmatized, ignored until crisis forces acknowledgment.
Students face immense pressure: academic expectations, family obligations, social challenges, economic stress, uncertain futures. They’re navigating adolescence while society demands they already have everything figured out. They’re processing trauma, anxiety, depression, and stress with few tools and even fewer safe spaces to discuss it.
HIECH Foundation spent five years addressing physical needs supplies, food, materials. But 2025 asked us to address something equally urgent: emotional and psychological wellbeing. Because what’s the point of providing educational materials if students are too overwhelmed to use them?
Mental Health Awareness became our project of the year. And “HIECH in My School” became the vehicle for spreading that awareness to students who needed it most.
A Nationwide Journey
This wasn’t a single-day event. This was a coordinated tour across Ghana, reaching different regions, engaging diverse student populations, proving that mental health conversations belong everywhere, not just in privileged, urban settings.
Apewosika Basic School – Central Region (May 14, 2025)
Apewosika opened the tour. The Central Region school welcomed us with the warmth characteristic of communities where everyone knows everyone, where students aren’t just students they’re neighbors’ children, family friends, community members.
But that intimacy also means students rarely get anonymity to discuss personal struggles. In close-knit communities, admitting you’re not okay can feel like exposing weakness to everyone who matters. The stigma cuts deeper.
Our facilitators approached sensitively. They didn’t lecture they conversed. They shared stories that normalized struggle. They explained mental health in language students understood, stripped of clinical jargon that distances rather than connects.
One facilitator talked about her own anxiety during school years. Students who’d been sitting back, arms crossed defensively, slowly leaned forward. Wait adults struggle too? Successful people experience mental health challenges? This isn’t just weakness?
The questions started tentatively: “Is it normal to feel overwhelmed by school?” “What if you’re sad but don’t know why?” “How do you know if you need help?”
By session’s end, students were engaged, asking follow-up questions, requesting more information. Teachers approached us afterward: “We needed this. We see students struggling but don’t know how to help. Thank you for starting this conversation.”
Forces Junior High School – Ashanti Region (May 16, 2025)
Two days later, we were in Kumasi. Forces Junior High School serves a unique population children of military personnel and surrounding communities. These students understand discipline, respect structure, navigate the complexities of military family life.
But that structure sometimes means emotions are viewed as weakness. Mental health challenges are seen as lack of discipline. Asking for help feels like admitting failure.
The session here required different framing. Our facilitators emphasized that mental health is health just like you’d seek help for a broken arm, you should seek help for emotional struggles. That strength includes knowing when to ask for support. That the most disciplined soldiers understand the importance of mental fitness.
One student, a boy maybe Form 2, raised his hand during Q&A: “Sir, my father is deployed. My mother is stressed. I’m trying to be strong for everyone. But sometimes I feel like I’m drowning. Is that normal?”
The silence that followed was thick with recognition. Other students nodded. That boy had vocalized what many felt but couldn’t articulate.
“It’s absolutely normal,” the facilitator assured him. “And it’s brave that you asked. Taking care of your mental health doesn’t make you weak it makes you wise.”
The relief on that student’s face was visible. Permission to struggle. Permission to seek help. Permission to be human despite the discipline surrounding him.
Jesus and Mary Schools Ltd. – Greater Accra Region (May 23, 2025)
The final school, back in Greater Accra. Jesus and Mary Schools Ltd. brought us full circle, ending the tour in the region where HIECH Foundation began.
This school served a more economically diverse population, which meant diverse stressors: some students worried about family finances, others about maintaining status, some about meeting impossibly high expectations, others about just getting by.
But mental health challenges don’t discriminate. Anxiety doesn’t check your bank account before showing up. Depression doesn’t care about your family’s social standing.
The session here focused on community support how to recognize when friends are struggling, how to be there for each other, how to create peer support systems. Because students often notice each other’s struggles before adults do.
We did an exercise: students wrote anonymous concerns on paper. Facilitators read them aloud, addressed them, normalized them. The variety was staggering everything from exam anxiety to grief, from social pressure to family conflict, from body image issues to existential dread about the future.
But the common thread? Relief at finally having permission to discuss it. Gratitude that adults were taking their mental health seriously. Hope that maybe, just maybe, they didn’t have to suffer in silence.
The Souvenirs That Kept Teaching
We didn’t just talk and leave. Every student received souvenirs materials they could take home, reference later, share with family. Information about mental health resources, helpline numbers, coping strategies, reminders that seeking help is strength, not weakness.
These weren’t throwaway items. These were tools. Physical reminders that mental health matters, that support exists, that they’re not alone.
Weeks after the tour, we received messages from teachers: students were still referencing the materials, still discussing the sessions, still using vocabulary they’d learned to articulate struggles they’d previously had no words for.
The souvenirs turned single sessions into ongoing conversations.
Three Hundred Students, Countless Ripples
Over 300 students directly impacted. But count the ripples: each student went home and potentially discussed it with family. Shared with friends. Normalized mental health conversations in their circles. The 300 became thousands.
Teachers received tools to better support struggling students. School counselors gained frameworks for addressing mental health. Parents learned that their children’s emotional wellbeing deserves attention alongside academic performance.
One school reported that after our session, several students approached the guidance counselor for help something that hadn’t happened in years. The session gave them permission. It broke the stigma just enough.
Why This Tour Mattered
Ghana’s education system excels at teaching academics. But life requires more than book knowledge. Students need emotional intelligence, mental health literacy, coping strategies, understanding that struggle doesn’t equal failure.
“HIECH in My School 2025” planted seeds. Not every seed will grow immediately. Some students will file the information away and retrieve it years later when they recognize themselves or someone they love struggling. Some will use it immediately. All of them now know that mental health is real, important, and discussable.
The nationwide scope mattered too. We could have done three schools in Accra. But reaching Central Region, Ashanti Region, and Greater Accra proved that mental health conversations belong everywhere. Urban schools don’t have a monopoly on mental health issues every student, regardless of location, deserves education about emotional wellbeing.
What’s Next?
One tour isn’t enough. Three hundred students aren’t enough. The need is greater than one project can address.
But this is how movements start with conversations. With brave students asking questions. With facilitators who understand that education includes emotional intelligence. With schools willing to carve out time for topics that don’t appear on exams but determine quality of life.
HIECH Foundation learned that mental health work requires sustained commitment. This tour was a beginning, not a conclusion. We’re exploring partnerships with mental health professionals, developing resources for schools, considering how to make this an annual initiative.
Because once you start a conversation this important, you can’t stop.
To Everyone Who Made This Possible
To our facilitators: you carried sensitive, crucial information to students who needed it. You created safe spaces for difficult conversations. You normalized struggle and destigmatized help-seeking. Your expertise changed lives.
To the three schools Apewosika Basic School, Forces Junior High School, and Jesus and Mary Schools Ltd.: thank you for trusting us with your students, for prioritizing mental health education, for understanding that academic success means nothing if students aren’t okay.
To our donors: you funded a tour that couldn’t be measured in traditional metrics. No supplies distributed. No physical materials provided (except souvenirs). Just conversations, education, awareness. Thank you for understanding that this work matters even when it’s invisible.
To the 300+ students who participated: thank you for your openness, your questions, your willingness to engage with uncomfortable topics. You are the reason we do this. Your mental health matters. Your emotional wellbeing is important. You deserve support.
