The Ice Bucket Challenge is back; this viral 2014 trend has reemerged and gained national attention as the USC Speak Your Mind Challenge takes on media platforms by storm.
The USC Speak Your Mind Challenge is an ice bucket challenge created by the MIND, Mental Health Needs Discussion, club from the University of South Carolina. Partnered with Active Minds, this club seeks to spread awareness and spark discussions surrounding suicide prevention and mental health.
Active Minds is a nonprofit organization founded by Alison Malmon following the suicide of her older brother, Brian. According to Active Minds, Brian was struggling with depression and psychosis, but concealed his symptoms. Though he was treated for schizophrenia, his underlying depression remained unaddressed. He suffered under the crushing weight of silence and committed suicide in March of 2000.
Now, organizations like Active Minds partner with students to focus on action and advocacy for mental health — the USC Speak Your Mind Challenge does both.
The rules of this challenge are simple — students get nominated, and within 24 hours, they must post themselves completing the challenge. In this video, they must shout out USC Mind, dump a bucket of ice water over their head, and challenge 2-5 other people. They must post the video using the hashtag #speakyourmind, tag @uscmind, the person who nominated them, and the few people they choose to nominate in return. Nominations can span across neighborhoods, school districts, and state lines.
Participants are then encouraged to donate to the USC Speak Your Mind fundraiser, which has currently raised over $170,000.
This mental health awareness ice bucket challenge closely models one done in 2014, supporting ALS organizations. The ALS challenge reached over 17 million people worldwide and raised $115 million to be further invested in ALS research and care for those living with the disease.
In late April, the USC Speak Your Mind Challenge reached Leesville Students. Each day, people uploaded new clips of ice bucket challenges to their Instagram stories. Many students chose to repost their nominator’s rendition of the challenge, forcing hundreds of thousands of eyes to be drawn to the cause.
Andrew Cook, freshman, said, “I did it at night when it was like 50 degrees. I was trying to be chill about it, but I might have screamed a little bit.”
This challenge has opened students’ eyes to how deeply connected we all are.
Cook said, “Everyone knows what the Speak Your Mind Challenge is because it has been spread through the whole school, almost the entire school has been nominated… It connected people.”
What started out as a simple chain of nominations in South Carolina can ripple across states, schools, and communities. People who might have otherwise never crossed paths are now linked. It reveals a wide, invisible web of human connection — a network of people that has always existed, but remained hidden, waiting for something important, like this cause, to bring it to life.
Through these small actions, we are reminded that our voices carry far beyond what we may think. It reminds people that we are never as alone as we might feel.
Students discussed the different videos at lunch, over texts, and were eager to be nominated themself.
Yet even with the same challenge, Leesville students tackled it in different ways — dumping water on their heads, recruiting friends to help, or even jumping into cold pools. It seemed like everyone was participating in the trend, but did the original message get lost in the excitement of social media?
Josh Hamre, sophomore, said, “I support the cause, but I don’t think the ice bucket challenge itself is helpful for it. We need to focus more on the aspect of speaking out about the issue.”
Mary Gaddy, senior, said, “When Easton [Hepp] and I did it, we made sure to bring up the cause so people know what is happening and why, and the importance of it. It shows a common goal for everybody to raise awareness and break the stigma around mental health.”
There is a delicate balance between something going viral for the message versus going viral for the activity. For those who focus more on the challenge, it is important to continue to investigate the whys of social media. By pairing a serious topic with a lighthearted activity, social media can begin to foster a safer, more comfortable space for open conversations.
Gaddy said, “If you’re really depressed or anxious for whatever reason, you could be judged for it. I think that to understand that mental health is something everybody deals with is very important.”
The USC Mind Instagram has grown to over 638,000 followers in the last few weeks. Their mission to spark conversation has gone far beyond what anyone could imagine. If social media can continue to be a platform of activism and strength, students and peers alike have the opportunity to invoke change around the world.
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