Depression, self-harm, and other mental illnesses attack teenagers across the globe each day. Personal and school life becomes difficult which leads to lack of fulfillment. Without proper care and awareness, these illnesses will only grow and worsen for the individual.

Sophomore Katie Stephenson is making it her goal to raise awareness for these illnesses through a self-organized holiday.

A time to celebrate life and promote positivity and awareness of mental illness and suicide is what Kindness Day is all about.

“Kindness day is a suicide awareness day where we hand out candy in the courtyard during both lunches to promote a positive environment and remind every student that they are worth life and being happy,” Stephenson said.

Sophomore Lindsey Cottle helped create the holiday, as it was originally intended as a memorial.

“Kindness day was created in memorial to the two people in my life I’ve lost to suicide and Lindsey’s neighbor who took her own life last year,” Stephenson said.

As planning developed, Kindness Day became more than Cottle had expected.

“We want to emphasize how important and relevant mental illness is in our society,” Stephenson said.

To make this one day happen, hours of time and work have been put in.

“We made posters and spent hours tying individual notes to almost 4,000 pieces of candy,” Stephenson said.

Help from Bowie administrators and making posters made a major difference with promoting the holiday.

“We made posters and stayed after school a lot to paint and hang posters, and we also had a lot of help from the counselors, Mrs. Reyna especially,” Cottle said.

Last year, being the first Kindness Day, there were complications with dates and amount of candy.

“It involved a lot of trips to the counselor to work out details,” Cottle said.

Weather played a big factor on the effect of the holiday last year as well, making it not go the way they had planned.

“It was a stormy day and we couldn’t go outside,” Stephenson said. “They kept everyone in FIT for safety reasons and combined both lunches so it wasn’t as big as we planned.”

Stephenson and Cottle are confident in campaigning more and changing plans to make sure things go more smoothly for this year’s Kindness Day.

“We’re going to campaign more and try to make the event bigger and impact more people,” Stephenson said.

Becky Stephenson, Katie’s mom, believes this day will encourage others to reach out to people in need.

“It’s a day to stop and take a moment to reach out to someone with a random act of kindness, someone that you don’t know,” Becky said. “Each and every one of us is going through something at any given time.”

Before Katie sought out this idea, she pondered over it and thought about what it would be like if everyone was nicer to one another.

“I think she would like to think that if we were kinder to one another tragic events like this won’t happen again,” Becky said.

Katie and Becky went over details and preparation involving everything from how much candy to buy and how to present the idea to Bowie administrators.

“We discussed prep time needed for the candy and message handouts, and her presentation to school administration,” Becky said. “We picked a few dates for the day itself and discussed how long it might take.”

Not only did planning go into this, but also research about the effects of suicide and statistics involving it.

“We had to do a lot of research and study statistics about depression, self-harm and suicide, and it really hit home,” Cottle said.

Some of the changes involving this year’s Kindness Day include money changes and candy donations.

“We’re planning on collecting money donations instead of candy donations, because most people have cash more readily available than bulk candy, and also so we can buy the necessary candy and donate the rest of the money,” Cottle said.

Geometry teacher Dana Stiles, her students were affected positively from last year’s holiday.

“My students really appreciated the nice gesture t,” Stiles said. The time and effort paid off and continues to pay off as Kindness Day nears for the second time.

“It was great to see people start to fully understand the seriousness of self-harm, and to smile when they realized that we were trying to do something about it,” Cottle said.