Mental health. Everyone talks about it… but how do we carry the conversation beyond the theoretical and find ways to make a difference?
Senior Kristen Lew’s journey with mental health began by recognizing her own experiences. Now, she works in countless ways as a podcaster, youth leader and mental health advocate.
Recently awarded the Girls Inc. 2024 National Scholarship and named one of Orange County’s top 125 influential people by the OC Register, Lew is making strides as a champion for the world around her.
“Being a catalyst and a mechanism for students to be able to access valuable resources that they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise, and to make it very widely known and accessible—that’s why I started my podcast,” Lew said. “I would say that’s why I keep my podcast still up and running.”
Lew created her podcast “The Care Café” in January 2022 as a mental health resource for students and teens who often cannot access help because of barriers like time, money and transportation.
As Lew continued to research and share expertise, she began using her podcast as a platform to interview various guests, including fellow podcasters, mental health patients, local psychologists, Stanford professors, Northwood counselor Kelsey Loup and even the Chief Innovation Officer of the National Alliance for Mental Illness.
“I can’t be the only person talking about these issues,” Lew said. “Mental health is so diverse, and that calls for a diversity of voices to be heard on my podcast.”
Growing up, Lew juggled the responsibilities of having a job and taking care of her younger brother while attending school in Irvine. With both parents working all day, Lew spent her childhood between Irvine, Santa Ana and San Francisco’s Chinatown. As a competitive dancer and debater, Lew quickly had to face the struggle of balancing all she wanted to do.
“All these very shared experiences were leeway into the idea of having so much stuff on your plate besides being a successful student,” Lew said. “It’s just life, and having to balance that is very difficult, especially at such a young age. In the midst of that, where does mental health come in?”
Lew’s personal experiences taught her to recognize the need for mental health awareness and propelled her to become an advocate and leader.
“What she does is so massively important,” Loup said. “She’s brought a spin to it that makes people want to get involved and want to be a part of this mental health revolution that is hopefully underway for our students.”
Lew also worked to advocate for the implementation of California Senate Bill 14 in schools, which allows students to take days off for mental health.
This was a need that Lew recognized in many of her peers, but she found that it was not being implemented in schools across IUSD and California.
Through a survey with Girls Inc., Lew discovered that upwards of 90% of students were unaware of their ability to take a mental health day off. Girls Inc. and Lew organized Grl Pac as an advocacy group to champion for the bill’s implementation in schools, speaking to schools and teams like the California State Board of Education. Now, the bill is included in the California attendance handbook, requiring every school to follow the procedure.
Currently, Lew is raising funds through “The Care Café” with a mental health education initiative to increase accessibility to mental health literature in Southern California libraries.
You can support “The Care Café’s” mental health education initiative by volunteering to bring books to libraries, mailing new books or donating through their GoFundMe. More information can be found on linktr.ee/thecarecafe.
“If you keep doing what you want to do, you’re going to eventually get to a point where you never know you would be able to get there,” Lew said. “The lengths of change that you could reach are endless.”
Treat yourself by tuning in to an episode of “The Care Café” podcast, which streams on various platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
