Taking a glance at the walls of South, there’s a noticeable amount of posters with the suicide help hotline or positive messages on it. These posters are put up by Sources of Strength, a nationwide group that teaches students to maintain a good mental health through social connections and focusing on one’s own strengths as well as the strengths of others. This emphasis on strength rather than just fixing weakness is an important part of building a positive mind set and good mental health.

“It’s about people talking about what their strengths are and trying to kind of shift the focus to those, to make sure that we’re recognizing those,” Sources of Strength counselor Erin Burvee said. “Because [the] human brain is designed to focus on problems to try to problem solve. And I think that that is a big piece with trying to shift our focus sometimes to recognizing some of the strengths that we have, instead of only some of maybe the areas of deficit and things that we want to work on.”

Focusing on one’s own strength is important, but one person as an individual won’t naturally have all the answers when it comes to maintaining good mental health. Sources of Strength is a good tool for students to feel comfortable with asking for help and embracing their struggles, while also relying on others for the strength they lack.

“Being able to connect to others during those difficult times, that social connection to others and being there for other people is the important piece of trying to help support everyone’s mental wellness,” Burvee said.

Connecting with other students to show support for or to rely on them is important to supporting the mental health of South as a community.

Sources of Strength often makes appearances in areas where students congregate to spread their message to as many people as possible. Recently they have done things such as put together an advisory lesson, hand out bracelets and create a poster board decorated with polaroid photos students had taken together in the lunch room. All of these things are curated specifically to increase student involvement and attention.

Posting 988 posters around the school, creating spirit week themes and writing positive chalk messages on the sidewalk are other things Sources of Strength does on a frequent basis. Sources of Strength members do these things to connect with students but also to send a message of the importance of selfcare.

“We always try to do a spirit week. We do this one where it’s like ‘treat yourself’ and it’s a pajama day,” Sources of Strength social media manager junior Izaiah Rivera said. “We’ll always come up with kind of silly but also detailed categories for the days.We try to make that week be like a self-care week.”