 in my face, you'll be hearing about some sort of topic that deals with mental illness. Today we're going to be talking about psychosis, and I know that's a weird topic to start out with, and a scary topic to start out with, so I guess that I should start with a bit of background about me. Five things to know about me, one, I'm really passionate about chocolate, two, I'm really passionate about mental illness, three, I'm not an animal person, four, no I don't think it's just really so great, oh my shirt matches my back thing, go me! I'm a senior in high school, currently 17, and I can't wait to get out into college, but I've experienced mental illness in the past, and I know the effects that it can have on people first hand, and one of those being psychosis. My psychosis wasn't really a laughing matter, I mean, I'll tell jokes and you'll hear lots of jokes coming from me in the future, but sometimes we'll get serious, and serious is okay. My psychosis started when I started hearing the voices, and the voices were scary, and they're scary for lots of people. They would say things like you're bad, you're wrong, you don't deserve to live, you need to die. They were things that most people should not have to listen to, and as someone dealing with mental illness I understood how that was something that was scary, it was terrifying to be scared of yourself. Psychosis is characterized by when your senses are sensing things that aren't there. It's also characterized by delusions, when you have beliefs about things that are proven to not be true. For example, you could believe that you're God, or you could believe that things have a special meaning just for you. I know that this happens with me a lot with music, I got into a fight with my friend the other day about whether the song Starving by Hailey Steinfeld is actually about food, and as someone who exhibits eating disorder behavior I definitely thought that it was about food, but turns out it's not, what would you know? I think that it's important for us to really talk about and have discourse on the issue of mental health. Psychosis is not an exception for us. Psychosis is definitely to be included in that match. I think that it's most important that we as people in a community who care about one another actually care about one another, and one of the main ways that I found to do that is by reaching out and offering support to those who need it. And a great way you can do that is by looking at a website that my friends and I have created called connecttoprotect.net. There you can post about your experiences with mental illness, whether it be psychosis, or be OCD, or just having a bad day if you think you're prone to mental illness. Mental illness is not a joking matter, and it's time for the world to start taking it seriously, one person at a time. Thank you.