Diagnosed with a mental illness as a teen, award finalist and U of T Mississauga student started a non-profit

A U of T Mississauga student who runs a non-profit organization is up for a global award.

Alanna Sethi, now in her third year studying psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, is a top-10 finalist for the Chegg.org Global Student Prize.

The $100,000 award is presented annually to an exceptional student who has used their educational background to make lasting positive impacts in their communities.

The top 10 finalists were selected from over 11,000 nominations and applications spanning 176 countries. The prize winner is expected to be announced later this month, during the UN General Assembly Week in New York.

Sethi, 20, is the founder and CEO of HOPE (Helping Our Planet Earth), a youth-led non-profit organization that makes mental health support and resources readily available to young people across the globe.

Her personal experiences with mental illness inspired Sethi to start the organization while she was in high school.

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Sethi was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Singapore but it was while she was away studying in boarding school in the U.K. that she learned about her mental health.

“It was when I moved to the U.K. and going through a lot of culture shock, but also bullying for some of the environmental advocacy work that I was doing,” Sethi told INsauga.com. “I learned that mental health existed because growing up in an Asian household, we never spoke about mental health.”

She was around 13 or 14 years old when she got a general diagnosis. Then after she returned home to Hong Kong, she got a more specific diagnosis of borderline personality disorder at 16 years old.

To get a specific diagnosis at a young age is unusual, she said. Most clinicians diagnose borderline personality disorder when people are 18 years old or older because of how the brain develops, Sethi said. There is also a lot of stigma around borderline personality disorder so a lot of clinicians don’t want to give patients that diagnosis because of the stigma or potential backlash.

“But I think for me, in my experience, knowing that that was what I experienced was so helpful for me in terms of realizing what are going to be the effective treatments, or how can I better manage these symptoms based on what other people’s lived experience with this condition have gone through,” she said.

While she was able to get help early and is managing her symptoms, not everyone can find resources. Many charities focus on mental health awareness in Asia but don’t provide people with places they can go for help or other resources to help.

“And so I think that’s where HOPE really grew to fill in that gap,” she said.

Sethi started her non-profit when she was about 11 years old to champion environmental issues. But she transitioned to focus on mental health for youth in the Asia-Pacific area in 2019.

She was discouraged from starting a non-profit at first. Sethi said she wanted to start a club at her school but was told no, and once she started HOPE people asked her why she was doing it. She said she was told to focus on her studies.

But she continued and now supervises a team of four permanent youth staff at HOPE, providing them with professional mentorship and supervision, peer support, and academic advice.

Up to 15 part-time youth volunteers also work for HOPE, all of them full-time high school or undergraduate students aged 16 to 24 from various countries around the world.

Sethi said she wanted to live in Canada and chose UTM because it is surrounded by nature.

“It’s such a beautiful campus, and it reminded me a bit of home where I grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong, very modern, beautiful architecture,” she said. “And I feel like that’s something that also contributes to mental health and well-being, just making sure that you feel at home and safe, especially when you’re going to a new place.”

She also wanted to study with Dr. Norman Farb who is doing research with Dr. Zindel V. Segal on how mindfulness can counteract depression.

As a certified yoga instructor, this research intrigued Sethi.

“I’m very interested in that intersection and holistic well being, and thinking about how that can be used as an accessible mental health intervention program for young people and students,” she said.

Being in the top 10 for the Chegg.org Global Student prize is an honour, she said.

“I don’t really see people like myself represented in the media — I’m a mixed young person. So I’m half Chinese, half Indian,” she said. “…also thinking about people with disabilities, I think especially within Asia, it kind of very much swept under the rug a lot of the time.”

She also hopes the focus on her work with the non-profit will encourage other youth.

“I’m just so honoured to hopefully be able to be the person that inspires someone else out there to know that they can do it and that this can be an option for them,” she said.

If Sethi wins, she plans to use the prize funds to sponsor HOPE’s further activities.

 

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The Chegg.org Global Student Prize was founded in 2021 by the Varkey Foundation in partnership with Chegg.org as a complement to its prestigious $1 million Global Teaching Prize. The aim of the prize is to create an international platform on which to share the efforts of extraordinary students with the goal of motivating young people across the globe to become leaders in their communities.

Influential figures from a variety of sectors including the arts, sports, and education from around the world are judges for the prize. These include Hollywood actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, FIFA World Cup champion Julie Ertz, NFL star Zach Ertz, Cynthia Bissett Germanotta, president and co-founder of Born This Way Foundation, which she launched with her daughter Lady Gaga, as well as education experts and public officials from around the world.

Learn more here.