One afternoon in late January, junior Esther Oh was doing homework in the library when she needed to blow her nose. Crossing the room to grab a tissue, she glanced through the window into the Atrium and noticed that “some sort of campaign” was now playing on the TV.

“I thought, ‘What is that?’” Oh said, eyebrows raised.

The video has since been taken down from the Atrium TV, but some students still might now know the answer to Oh’s question.

The video, named “Facts That Will Make You Nicer,” was created by social news and entertainment website Buzzfeed. According to Assistant Headmaster Hal Mason, the idea of posting the video came from a student group within the Peer Leadership program. Mason said that the students approached him the week before midyears asking for permission to put a video they had found on the TV.

“We were just brainstorming ways we could make [the video] public,” junior Anja Beslic, a group member, said. “We thought that the new TV would be a good way for people to see it when they walk into school.”

Junior SaraAnn Rosenthal said that the video, discovered by senior Tahira Saalik, was part of an effort to relieve student anxiety over midyears.

“We wanted to make everyone aware that they’re not alone and that everyone is in the same boat as them when it comes to school,” Rosenthal said.

Saalik said that while the group was brainstorming ways to spread their message, she immediately thought of a video she had previously seen surfing Buzzfeed.

“Flyers you kind of just pass by and never really see,” Saalik said. “I don’t know how many people walked into the Atrium and saw that video, but I know that I saw the video probably a couple months before we talked about it in Peer Leadership and it stuck with me.”

According to Beslic, each group within Peer Leadership targets a different health risk behavior, such as smoking, unhealthy relationships or drunk/buzzed driving. Beslic said their specific group focused on stress, depression and the harmful behaviors they can cause, such as self-medication.

“All these things are really common and not necessarily recognizable by the stereotypes people might assume,” Beslic said.

According to the Brookline High School 2013 Youth Health Survey, 75 percent of students felt overwhelming stress or anxiety occasionally or frequently within the span of 12 months, and 20 percent of students felt suicidal within the span of 12 months.

“It’s such a huge issue that it’s really hard to think about what we could do about it,” Coordinator of Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention Mary Minott, who is one of two Peer Leadership teachers, said.

According to Minott, the students made flyers for bathroom stalls called the “Toilet Paper” and presented in freshman Health and Fitness classes in addition to posting the video.

Minott said that the message of the video is effective because it offers a simple way to fight anxiety or depression: helping other people.

“If you just go grocery shopping for some senior, or you have some friend who’s really struggling with some homework and you sit down and help them, or you have a parent or a sibling that you do something nice for, it just gets you outside of your own little bubble,” Minott said.

Minott said that meaningful connections built through helping others puts the triviality of something like midyears in perspective.

“Really, will you remember your midterm grade five years from now, or even in June?” Minott asked. “What you will remember is the significant relationships you had with people.”

Similar to other school efforts fighting anxiety and depression, such as Dr. Mykee’s presentation during Intersession Day, the video encourages “little unremembered acts of kindness” as opposed to a major upheaval of society.

“It’s not meant to be life-changing, just in the course of your day,” Minott said. “Little things like that make a difference. The shift in culture is gradual.”

 Sofia Tong can be contacted at [email protected].