National Mental Health Awareness Month- Baking Can Be Powerful Ammunition Driving Mental Well-Being

Mental health is not an item which I feel would be proximate to me in any way until that Spring night. On that night, it suddenly dawned on me that the entire first five months of my high school life happened in the virtual world. We met all the old friends and new students in the zoom boxes during the class orientation. The first two field trips had been cancelled. The renowned crispy chicken sandwich of the high school dining hall remained as a mouth-watering picture on the lunch menu. The cooking club gatherings never got past the introduction (yes, zoom style). The vanished sports teams and music classes. I have never had a stronger feeling of being with this eerie sense of quietness. I have never missed more of the hugs with friends, the races to the next session with classmates, and the cheerful mocking on the track field. I’m even willing to take more problem sets on the white boards in exchange for the group chats often huddled around the boards. Despite the seemingly unlimited possibilities hosted in the virtual screen, live smiles always trump the technology.

Since then, I’ve read about the increasing severity of mental health challenges. The virtual world deprives people of in-person experiences and a sense of community. Particularly for young people, COVID pandemic has a profound impact on their mental well-being, leading to increased feelings of loneliness, anxiety, depression, and feelings of isolation.

It prompted me to start Bake To Delight, a non-profit organization aiming to simply spread the joy from baked goods and to promote mental well-being particularly among young people. I’ve enjoyed making cookies and cakes since I was very young. The aroma coming out of the oven while the dough is rising, that just seems incredibly charming. Weighing, mixing, kneading the dough, shaping out each piece, making icing with the perfect texture, every little task takes you further away from the daily chores and stressors, every little progress builds up the joy from creating something warm and delicious.

Baking is contagious, at the many baking workshops I hosted with kids and elderly alike, streams of laughter briskly flow across the room like happy tides. Baking is a catalyst, it takes the tiny spark and builds a warm fire of joy. Baking is like glue, it brings people together and cements the connection through butter and milk. Baking is a bridge, the other end of it may just have the magic to shower the colorful sweets for lives.

Bake To Delight aims to foster communities around baking and pastries. Creative art, such as baking, can serve as an inviting medium for people to express their feelings more easily, working as an outlet for emotional release and help promote empathy and support to break the stigma. In simple ways – the accomplishment of making a cookie and the pleasure of biting into a pastry, baking and pastries are powerful to evoke joy, cultivating the sense of community which is vital for combating feelings of disconnection.

There are layers of complexity to mental health struggles. Unlike chats about sports and weather, mental health discussion does not come up naturally in social settings. Even when the subject is raised, often people tend to shrug the shoulders and dismiss the issue as something that can be cured with a more positive attitude. Particularly the minority communities often face cultural stigma and disparities for access to mental support.

We need to create safe spaces to enable open exchanges. It calls for concerted efforts from society to promote mental health awareness and access to intervention, including family, physicians, advocacy groups, and government.

May is the National Mental Health Awareness Month, and July is the National Minority Mental Health Month.

On July 30, Bake To Delight had the wonderful pleasure to partner with the Mental Health Association of NJ (MHANJ) again in commemorating the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) Mental Health Month with its Annual BIPOC Messages of Hope and Celebration. The event unfolded with great momentum in cool and breezy winds with families and communities gathered on the meadow of Oskar Schindler Performing Arts Center. The featured Project Broken delivered an empowering performance where the spirit of mental health awareness epitomizes in the language of dance portraying the struggle, pain, courage, hope, and connection.