This summer I have had the privilege of working as an intern for CAYEN (California Youth Empowerment Network), a branch of Mental Health America of California. In the past few months, we’ve been working up to an event which we finally hosted last week. This event was a Local Advocacy Training for transition age youth (people aged 16-25).

CAYEN was formed to develop, improve and strengthen the voice of transition age youth (TAY) in local and state-level policy. CAYEN has a state-wide board made up of TAY who have experience in the mental health, foster care, or juvenile detention systems. This board acts as a voice for all of TAY in California and is crucial in helping decide the bills that CAYEN lobbies for in order to best serve TAY.

In this training our team taught young adults how they can help fight stigma and become advocates for improved mental health systems in the area. A main part of this training was helping youth learn how to tell their own story. The way that your story is told can have an effect on your audience.

Each person has the ability to be a local advocate, and social media allows everyone to share their advocacy story with the world. Especially for TAY, social media is a large part of life, and this creates a space for people to fight the stigma of mental illness with ease.

Here are 6 steps to creating your advocacy story:

1.) Who are you and why are you here?

Introduce yourself: share your name, where you’re from, what you do, etc.

2.) Your experience with mental illness

What happened? Share how you are affected by mental illness and what your experience was like before you got the help you needed. Keep this brief and appropriate for your audience. This is where people need to be careful. Selecting the language you use to tell your story is very important. Keep in mind that you are sharing this with a large audience and you will need to make sure your story is free of possible triggers for everyone reading/listening. Another important thing that is often overlooked is checking in with yourself, writing your story can be a really emotional process so make sure you’re constantly in tune with your own feelings.

3.) Your recovery

What helped you the most in your recovery? Try to give concrete examples and focus on things that are relevant for what you are advocating for. This section of your story also must be carefully worded. You cannot preach a certain type of recovery to your audience. Make this section very personal by emphasizing that this is what helped YOU, without prescribing it to the entire audience.

4.) Where you are now

How are you different today? Describe your life right now and how you are experiencing your recovery. Explain what you learned from this experience.

5.) Your point

Transition from your personal story to your message for your audience. What do you wish had been different? This is where you can bring up what you are advocating for or trying to call attention to. In the example of fighting stigma you can use this section to say how your story may have been different if there wasn’t a stigma attached to mental illness.

6.) Your ask

Let you audience know how they can help you and how you would like them to make a difference.

It is estimated that 1 in 5 Americans live with a diagnosable mental disorder, but of these people only 1 in 3 seek treatment. Stigma has been labeled as a major cause in preventing people from seeking treatment, according to National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Something as simple as sharing your story can foster a place for discussion about mental illness, and through this, we can lessen the stigma of mental illness. Lessened stigma creates a safer place for people with mental illnesses and allows them the freedom to talk about their illness and seek the proper treatment. So share your story and become and advocate for fighting the stigma of mental health.