Letting young people know it's OK to not always feel OK has never been more important.
Demand for youth counselling in New Zealand has leapt 500 per cent in the past two years. So, one Christchurch teenager is using her journey with obsessive-compulsive disorder to help others with mental health challenges, raising money for Gumboot Friday along the way.
Eighteen-year-old Amelie Coggan was three years old when she had a really bad dream.
"I was walking through a wooden house and there was a hand poking through a hole in the floor," she said. "It's written in my baby books apparently... my Mum and Dad had to put a towel over the floor and that towel had to be on the floor every night for six months."
The nightmare wasn't the problem.
The problem was Coggan's inability to detach from it and other neuroses as she grew older. Everything that worried her also consumed her.
"It got to a point I had to wake every person in my family, including my two-year-old sister, every night to make them super duper promise I wasn't going to have a bad dream," Coggan said.
At age 15, the softly-spoken Christchurch teen was finally diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
By then, she said, "typical OCD symptoms" had surfaced.
"Most people with OCD will have their life revolve around a number and my number was nine," she explained. "I remember once on a family ski trip, I had to clap my hands nine times every time I skied down the slope. I hate skiing," she laughed.
At age 16, Coggan's mental health was so bad she had to quit school.
"It was debilitating. I couldn't get out of bed... I just didn't want to be here anymore," she said. "I was trapped in these, like, really intrusive thoughts of me like dying and stuff."
But then, mercifully, Coggan turned a corner.
The little toys she'd been making – or, as she now calls them, "Little Joys" – gave her enough hope to carry on.
"It gave me purpose," she said.
Fast-forward two years, Little Joys is a thriving little business with all manner of wellness toys and trinkets – and Coggan is much brighter too.
A letterbox in Christchurch's Bottle Lake Forest bears kindness letters and knick-knacks and today, the teenager's on a mission to raise money for Gumboot Friday.
"I was privileged enough to be able to access private counselling, but not everyone is and that needs to change," she said.
"It's super important that we raise enough money through Gumboot Friday for everyone to be able to access counselling."
So, Coggan is selling raffle tickets to win one of four super-sized soft toys: "Worry Monster", "Optimistic Octopus", "Fearless Frog" and "Calming Kitty".
If you'd like to purchase raffle tickets in support of Gumboot Friday, click here.
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