Inaugural cycle · Awarded for the Spring 2027 term · Deadline 30 November 2026

$1,500 for a student writing about mental health in higher education. Write 800 to 1,200 words on one of six themes and email it to us by 30 November 2026. Full details below.

RehabSeekers is an independent directory of licensed treatment facilities. We are not a treatment provider and take no referral fees, and this contest is part of how we give something back to the community our work serves.

Award details

Funds are paid directly to the financial aid office at the winner’s institution and applied to tuition, fees, or other qualified educational expenses under that school’s disbursement policy. We do not send award money to students personally.

Who can apply

You are eligible if all of the following are true on 30 November 2026:

• You are 18 or older.
• You are a US citizen, permanent resident, or hold a visa permitting study in the United States.
• You are enrolled, or have accepted an offer of admission, at an accredited US institution — community college, four-year college or university, graduate program, or an accredited trade or technical program.
• You are enrolled at least half-time for the Spring 2027 term. Part-time students are welcome; we recognize that a reduced load is often what makes staying in school possible.

Essay themes

Choose one of the six themes below and name it on the first line of your essay. Any combination of them is fine — just tell us which one your piece sits closest to. All six are judged on the same criteria and compete for the same awards.

You do not need a diagnosis, a treatment history, or a recovery story to enter. Theme 3 is about someone else rather than yourself, and Theme 6 requires no personal disclosure at all. The themes involving disclosure carry no advantage over the one that does not.

1. The term it nearly came apart

A first-hand account of a specific stretch when your mental health made studying feel impossible, and what you actually did about it. Anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, disordered eating, bipolar disorder, or something that never got a tidy name. We are more interested in what you tried, what worked, and what did not than in a general account of feeling overwhelmed.

2. Recovery and the classroom

Studying while in recovery from a substance use disorder. The logistics of getting to a Tuesday meeting between a lab and a shift. The conversation with an advisor that went well, or the one that did not. What a campus built around drinking looks like from where you are standing.

3. The family seat

Studying while a parent, sibling, partner, or child lives with addiction or a serious mental illness. Roughly one in eight American children lives in a household affected by addiction, and many arrive on campus still carrying it. Write about your own experience of it — you are not required to disclose details about the other person, and we would rather you did not.

4. Studying at a distance

What mental health looks like when your degree happens mostly through a screen. Online programs, hybrid study, long commutes, working full-time in a different time zone from your cohort. Isolation, the difficulty of asking for help from a support service you have never physically visited, or what a program did that actually made you feel part of something.

5. Coming back later

Starting or restarting a degree as an adult, alongside a job, children, caregiving, or a career you are trying to leave. What nobody warned you about, what your institution assumes about students that turned out not to apply to you, and how you handled the parts that were hardest.

6. What should change

An argument for one specific improvement to how colleges support student mental health — counseling center staffing and wait times, medical withdrawal and readmission policy, academic accommodations, support for online cohorts, collegiate recovery programs, how mental health is handled in the first-year experience. Pick one, show your reasoning, cite your sources. Written in first or third person, either is fine.

Essay requirements

• Length: 800 to 1,200 words. Essays outside this range are not read.
• Format: PDF or .docx. Put your name and chosen theme on the first line.
• Original work only. Every submission is screened for AI-generated text and for plagiarism. A flag is not an automatic disqualification — screening tools misfire, particularly on writers whose first language is not English — so flagged essays go to a human reader, and finalists are asked a few questions about how they wrote the piece.
• Citations: if you use statistics or research, cite the primary source rather than the article reporting it. A short reference list does not count toward your word limit.
• Please leave out specifics of method. If you write about self-harm, an overdose, or a suicide attempt, describe what happened and what it meant without detailing how. This is a public page and it is read by people who are struggling. It will not count against you.

How we judge

We are judging the essay, not the hardship. A carefully argued Theme 6 piece can beat a dramatic personal story, and often does. Essays are read by the RehabSeekers editorial team with identifying details removed before scoring. The panel’s decision is final.

How to enter

1. Check that you meet every eligibility requirement above.
2. Write your essay and choose your theme.
3. Email your essay to scholarship@rehabseekers.com with the subject line Essay Contest 2026 – Submission.

Include with your submission:

• Full name and preferred email address
• Institution name and program of study
• Expected graduation term
• Proof of enrollment or an admission letter (a screenshot of your student portal is fine)

Key dates

Your privacy

These essays ask people to write about sensitive things, so we want to be plain about what happens to them.

• Submissions are read only by the judging panel. They are not shared, sold, or passed to any treatment provider, advertiser, or third party.
• We do not add entrants to a marketing list. Your email is used to administer this contest and nothing else.
• No essay is published anywhere without your separate written permission, which we would only ask for after the results are announced. Saying no changes nothing about your entry.
• Submissions are deleted within 90 days of 15 January 2027.
• If something you write suggests you may be in danger, a member of our team will reply with crisis resources. We are not clinicians and will not attempt to counsel you, and it will not affect how your essay is judged.

Our general data practices are covered in the privacy policy. Full contest terms are available on request by email.

Questions

Email scholarship@rehabseekers.com. We answer questions about eligibility and format, but we cannot review draft essays or comment on your chances.

RehabSeekers is an independent treatment directory. We are not a treatment provider, we accept no referral fees, and entering this contest creates no obligation of any kind. This page is not medical advice. Void where prohibited.