Tampa Bay 28 anchor Wendy Ryan covers mental health extensively and has attended the Florida Behavioral Health Conference in Orlando for several years.

While there, Ryan has met with mental health professionals to discuss new cutting-edge techniques and listened to stories of hope and strength, including one of the keynote speakers this year, Emma Benoit.

Benoit had the perfect-looking life from the outside as a pretty, popular cheerleader with lots of friends. But on the inside, she was lost in sadness and never told a soul.

"Because of the stigma around mental health and mental illness, I was totally uneducated and honestly ashamed of the feelings that I was living with, and I created this image and this persona of perfection as kind of a shield to mask my anxieties and my feelings of

See Full Page