School offers students tools for mental health issues

MT. PLEASANT — Mt. Pleasant High School guidance counselor Ashlei Venghaus aims to teach teens at the high school on how to take care of their mental health.

She wants to give them the tools to overcome the struggles that come with everyday life and help them end the stigma around mental health.

Wednesday the school held Healthy You 2021 with a variety of speakers and activities.

To start the day, mixed martial arts fighter and Youth For Christ leader Parnell Davis spoke to the students about his life and the challenges he has faced. Davis, who is Black, didn’t have it easy growing up in the 1980s. He faced racial slurs, his property was vandalized with slurs, and he said he was bullied all through high school.

“I suffered growing up biracial in Southeast Iowa. When my mom married an abusive Black man and had me, I struggled because nobody looked like me, I grew up in an all-white world, and I remember in the third grade trying to take an eraser to my arm to look like everyone else,” Davis said.

Davis struggled with his identity and along with an abusive father and troubled single mother he had trauma to process. After being kicked out of college for threatening a staff member, Davis snapped. He turned to partying and drugs and alcohol to numb the pain. After his mom died in 2016, he nearly broke.

Davis said he was having a rough time with life. He stopped abusing substances after he pursued mixed martial arts and worked with traumatized youth at the Christamore Family Center in Mt. Pleasant.

According to Davis, “MMA saved my life.” He proceeded to fight in 25 matches as an amateur mixed martial arts fighter.

Davis wants students to persevere and do better than he did — to not smoke or drink or make bad decisions so that they can be better even though most will struggle in life.

“I’m not here to motivate you. I’m here to tell you that life is going to be hard sometimes. You're going to be bullied and that you’re going to experience hardships and tough times,” Davis said.

“I’m also here to tell you that those moments will make you a greater person And you're not always going to be motivated. Sometimes you don’t have the motivation to succeed but what you can be is determined ,” he added.

Venghaus said she organized this event to help end the stigma around mental health and help instill strategies and ideas that will help students with their mental health and help them for the rest of their lives.

“I want the kids to take something from this day that would help their mental health. We have such a critical time in kids’ lives because they are either going off in a career or college and they are going to be adults soon,” Venghaus said. “So this is kind of our last chance to instill those strategies that they can use to help their mental health.”

Venghaus wanted to make sure to instill those values in students before the stresses of life come as many have stressful schedules, and many are headed off to college.

“I wanted to choose different people that would connect with different kids and what they’re going through because I wanted this day to be impactful,” Venghaus said.

“High school is stressful as it is; with activities, jobs, and other things on their plate. If this is something that can resonate that is my goal,” Venghaus added

Overall Venghaus wanted to help students improve themselves and their mental health. She had help from volunteers such as Davis who came to the high school to talk. These included therapists, nutritionists, Dr. Djonggi Situmeang from Mt. Pleasant Family Medicine and a school social worker.