Ross Szabo

Ross Eugene Szabo was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on May 5, 1978. He was raised in Nazareth, Pennsylvania where he attended Northampton Senior High School. It was at Northampton High School where Ross first started speaking AbOUT mental health issues and his experience with bipolar disorder.

Ross Szabo was truly the pioneer of mental health awareness presentations in America and created an entire genre of speaking for high school and college students. He took the mental health message out of the mental health field and reached people in ways no one had before him. Without his tireless work the concept of mental health awareness for young adults would not be where it is in America today. His programs and IDeaS gave a voice to hundreds of thousands of young people when he was speaking and will continue to change millions of people’s minds. Ross is currently volunteering in Botswana with the United States Peace Corps.

Biography

Mental illness first entered Ross’s life at age 11 when he visited his brother, Thad, in a psychiatric ward at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. In the summer of 1994 at age 16 Ross started to experience symptoms of bipolar disorder. After sleepless nights, uncontrollable bouts of anger and quick periods of depression Ross saw a psychiatrist and was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Over the next year of his life the disorder continued to worsen leading to more anger and psychotic episodes. One year later, Ross’s diagnosis changed to bipolar disorder with anger control problems and psychotic features.

In September 1996 Ross went into a deep episode of depression. On January 5, 1996, Ross was hospitalized for attempting to take his own life. After Ross got out of the hospital and went back to high school he felt a lot of things had changed. He lost some friends, there were endless rumors about him and people treated him differently. One day a psychiatrist came into one of his classes to talk about mental illness. As the psychologist talked about patients he treated the students in the classroom began laughing. Ross felt everyone in that room was indirectly laughing at him. He took his teacher into the hallway and told him he did not think this was funny. His teacher asked Ross what he wanted to do about it and Ross informed his teacher he wanted to speak. Ross spoke in that same classroom two weeks later and unknowingly started a journey that would lead to the creation of an entire new way of speaking about mental illness.

Ross’s struggles were not over after high school. He attended American University in the fall of 1996, but was forced to take a leave of absence due to a relapse with bipolar disorder two months into his freshman year. He was hospitalized again in November 1996. He attended Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, PA for one semester in the spring of 2007. He worked on finding a better treatment and struggled heavily with alcohol abuse as a way to deal with his disorder. He attended Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA for three semesters from the spring of 1998 to the spring of 1999. Ross returned to American University in the fall of 2000.

By the time Ross returned to American University he had been speaking to high school classrooms about his life with bipolar disorder for over 4 years. He wondered why his presentation was only happening in classrooms and was not being offered as a full school assembly. He researched if there were any organization offering large-scale presentations on mental health and did not find any. Ross decided to start his own mental health awareness organization to address this need. In March 2001, Ross was the first and only American University student to speak for the renowned Kennedy Political Union Lecture Series. He launched his organization the Youth Mental Health Awareness Movement at the event.

After graduating from American University in the summer of 2002, Ross was hired as the Director of Youth Outreach for the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign (NMHAC). NMHAC was started at the 1999 White House Conference on Mental Health chaired by Tipper Gore. The organization’s mission was to remove the stigma surrounding mental illness that was preventing so many people from seeking the help they need. Ross’s idea to move the organization forward was to start giving large scale presentations on mental health to as many middle school, high school and college students possible. NMHAC also hoped to develop full school programs to go in line with the presentations to educate the school community, parents and everyone involved in a young adult’s life. Ross also started speaking for CAMPUSPEAK, Inc. in 2002.

From 2002 to 2006 Ross was the only person in the country to speak to over half a million young people about mental health issues. He learned that the best approach to educate young people about mental health was to promote the idea that everyone needed to achieve good mental health rather than isolate mental illness. He was the first mental health advocate to win Campus Activities Magazine's Rising Star Speaker Award in 2006 and Best Male Performer Award in 2007. The awards were voted on by over 4,000 college campuses, which helped a lot of campuses see the need for mental health presentations. His presentations inspired tens of thousands of people to seek help, but Ross knew more was needed. He knew it was vital for the organization to train more speakers and expand into a full speakers’ bureau, so more people could be reached and other people could benefit from speaking.

In 2006, Ross worked with Lizzie Simon to create the first speakers’ bureau in United States history that promoted mental health in large-scale youth settings. The speakers’ bureau was named the Heard. All of the speakers of the Heard began speaking in spring of 2007. Their presentations and personal stories empowered young adults to come forward with their own stories and start talking about issues that many were not willing to share.

In 2007, Ross co-authored a book titled, Behind Happy Faces; Taking Charge of Your Mental Health A Guide for Young Adults. The book is a compilation of the most common questions and concerns Ross heard from young adults and parents as he traveled the country. The chapters of the book deal with the most common problems facing young adults, the reasons they do not seek help, differences in gender, race, class and [...] orientation as well as how to navigate difficult situations with friends, family and in relationships. The book was widely successful and is being used as curriculum in high schools and colleges nation-wide.

Ross continued to grow the Heard from 2007 to 2010. He has provided training to some of the most well known young mental health advocates in the United States, including Jordan Burnham, John Kevin Hines, Colleen Coffey etc. Outside of increasing the size of the Heard Ross also worked on a mental health school program called, “Change Your Mind.” The program was piloted in Wayne County, Michigan and parts of it were used in Alhambra, CA and Philadelphia, PA. The program was extremely effective in increasing the amount of young people seeking help, as well as changing perceptions of people with mental illness.

In February 2010, Ross left the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign. The Heard was transferred to the leading college mental health advocacy organization, Active Minds, Inc. From 2002 to 2008, Ross was the only person in the United States and the world to speak directly to over one million young people about mental health. During that time he was often the first person to ever speak about mental health at hundreds of high schools, colleges and conferences focusing on young adults. He reached millions of people through the media via interviews with CBS, CNN, MTV, NPR, Parade Magazine, Seventeen Magazine, Web-Md, Huffington Post, Fox News, and hundreds of local news stories including a show called "Minding Your Mind" on a local PBS station in Buffalo, NY. Ross’s advocacy work was entered into the Congressional Record by Congressman Patrick Kennedy in March 2010. He was awarded the 2010 Didi Hirsch Removing the Stigma Leadership Award.

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