May is Mental Health Awareness month. At a time when those with mental illnesses have faced particularly difficult challenges, some in Guilford are asking residents to start simply: with some ice cream.

Guilford High School (GHS)’s newly formed student run Mental Health Alliance club has partnered with Ashley’s Ice Cream this month to hold a contest for new ice cream flavors that will raise money for the club as well as awareness around mental health issues.

“The goal...is to give people an easy (and delicious) way to start a conversation about mental health and any challenges they might be facing,” club president Addie Kenney told the Courier via email. “We hope conversation starters like this will help destigmatize mental health by making talking about mental health part of everyone’s daily conversations!”

The 250 community-submitted flavor ideas were eventually narrowed down to two choices, crafted by Ashley’s: “Self Care-amel Surprise” and “Don’t Be Blue-Berry Pie.” Residents have been casting ballots on a winner for the last two weeks or so, and all sales of these two flavors are funding the Mental Health Alliance, according to Kenney.

Ashley’s co-owners Brian Anderson and Joe Ametrano said there has been a huge interest in the contest, and their customers—often young people who are more attuned to these issues—are a large part of the businesses’ commitment to supporting important issues in the community.

“After the year that we’ve been to, everybody’s mental health is a pretty big concern,” Anderson said. “Anything that can bring attention to it is great.”

Multiple studies have shown the pandemic has had an outsized impact on young people, with isolation related to school closures accelerating an already-burgeoning crisis of anxiety, depression, and other mental health struggles. Early this year, Kenney lobbied GHS and district administrators to create the student-run club, arguing that peer-centered advocacy was an important part of addressing these issues.

Members of the Mental Health Alliance have, according to club co-founder Kelsey Lynch, leveraged both social media and their own more informal networks to spread awareness about mental health issues.

Ametrano said he personally had not been aware of just how severe the issues were, citing a pre-pandemic study that found around 20 percent of teens had a diagnosed mental health condition.

“Most people don’t know it—I didn’t,” he said.

From an ice cream perspective, Anderson said he saw Ashley’s whole mission and business model as fitting right into this kind of initiative.

“For us, we’re in a business where we’re just kind of here to put smiles on people’s faces naturally,” he said.

With five shoreline locations, Ashley’s is small enough to put personal touches and develop its 100 flavors, often based on community input, according to Ametrano. Anderson added that they had put special effort into the “Self Care-amel” and “Blue-berry Pie,” including seeking out not-quite in-season blueberries for a real natural flavor.

Sometimes these flavors are continued, sometimes retired, according to Ametrano.

In fact, Kenney helped design an Ashley’s flavor almost a decade ago as part of another charitable drive she put together with the help of her family—a flavor that is still in circulation, Ametrano said.

“I’m so grateful that Brian and Joe have always embraced giving back with open arms, and are always so enthusiastic about supporting their community,” Kenney said.

Though the intention with the contest was to announce a winner based on votes cast by customers and begin selling and making that flavor exclusively, Anderson said that it was more aligned with the mission of the whole initiative to remain inclusive, and “recognize them both.”

“One thing that [Kenney] brought up to me was that mental health, a lot of it is about inclusion, and so maybe we shouldn’t pick an absolute winner,” Anderson said.

Or, according to Kenney, winning is about reducing stigma and talking about mental health, while maybe treating yourself to an ice cream along the way.

“I think it also goes to show how something as seemingly small as an ice cream contest can make such a huge difference,” she said. “I’ve never heard so many people talking about mental health so frequently and so openly.”