Depression is something that affects millions of Americans and not all seek help for their condition.
According to Mental Health America, as many as one in five teens suffer clinical depression, with girls particularly prone to feelings of low self-esteem.
One teen felt so low she couldn’t get out of bed for weeks. She’d lay in bed for so long that her hair had become one big matted mess.
With the new school year only a few weeks away, she knew she had to do something about her hair so went into a salon to ask the stylist if she could just shave it off.
But the stylist knew she had to do more for this girl that just shave her locks off.
The 16-year-old girl, who had been battling depression for a few years, walked into a salon asking for her head to be shaved.
Stylist Kayley Olsson said the teenager had spent most of the summer unable to get out of bed and hadn’t brushed her hair.
Wanted her head shaved
As picture day was approaching the teenager knew she needed help but didn’t think she was worthy of her hair and wanted it all shaved off.
“When she walked in she told us just cut it all off I can’t deal with the pain of combing it out, she called herself worthless for it,” Kayley wrote in a Facebook post.
“It honestly broke my heart and we tried everything we could to keep this child’s hair for her!”
Kayley, a 20-year-old student hairdresser in Waterloo, Iowa, set to work and spent the next 8 hours of her day brushing and conditioning the girl’s matted tresses.
“Cutting her hair was absolutely not a option for me,” Kayley told the BBC. “I knew right then and there that we had to keep as much hair as possible.”
‘You made me feel like me again’
After spending another five hours the following day working on the girl’s hair, Kayley and her fellow stylist Mariah Wenger left her with a beautiful head of hair again.
“We finally made this beautiful girl smile and feel like she IS worth something! Her last words to me was ‘I will actually smile for my school picture today, you made me feel like me again,'” Kayley said.
Find out more about this stylist with a big heart in the clip below.
[arve url=”https://youtu.be/IBEdPHvHRWU” /]
Depression can happen to anyone and anytime, it’s important to look for signs in those around us and do all we can to help.
Please share to spread awareness and understanding. It’s usually the small things we do that can have the biggest impact.
