The Well of PBC / April 2022 Issue

THE FOUNTAIN

Get Your Green On: How It Started vs. How It’s Going

BY: CLAUDE LAMARRE PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAM KEOKI @SAM_KEOKI_PHOTO

In honor of Get Your Green On Month, the campaign aimed to raise awareness by creating visible support and fostering safe spaces to talk openly about mental health and trauma, we spoke to one of the campaign’s founders to learn more about where it started and where it is today. Claude Lamarre was just a teenager when he joined the mental health club, and now the young man reflects on how far beyond the four walls of his high school it’s gone.

Six years ago, my high school classmate, community

leader, and now author, Jesula Jeannot reached out to me about a mental health club that was part of a new initiative sponsored by Healthier Delray Beach (HDB). Walking into this, I didn’t know much about mental health. With all the stigma surrounding it, it felt too taboo to talk about.

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Seeing so many people, especially young people talk so proudly on social media about mental health, hearing so many people talk so openly about going to therapy, shows the progress we are making as a society to destigmatize mental health.

10The Well Of PBC / April Issue 2022