First of all, I agree with those suggesting that you take the essay focus off of your mental health struggles. I understand that you intend to frame this in a positive light, but it’s still better not to make these kind of challenges the centerpiece of your application. Colleges, as already noted by others, can be very risk-averse in this respect. Let your counselor explain that you had health challenges sophomore year and that they are confident that these challenges are in the rear view mirror. Use your own writing to show how thoroughly in-the-past your struggles are by focusing entirely on your passions and your growth, without the frame of mental health struggles as the starting point of that growth.
Overall, looking at your situation from a college’s point of view… a solid 9th grade year is ancient history at this point and won’t help you much… then there was a “catastrophic” sophomore year, and then a good comeback junior year. So basically, in terms of what a college wants to see, your transcript is evenly split between the parts you want them to overlook, and the parts that show your potential. The biggest problem, IMHO, is that you just haven’t had that much time to show consistency, since your mental health crisis. If you apply ED1, there won’t be senior grades on the books before they have to make a decision. I would predict that at best, Bates (and other peer institutions) would defer you, so as to verify that your senior year is continuing the positive trend, before making a decision. Even if they’re inclined to accept you, I think they’ll see an acceptance in December as too big a risk; from their point of view, the pendulum might just as easily swing back, and they’ll want to see that it doesn’t.
If you feel strongly about aiming for a highly-rejective LAC like Bates, one thing you might consider is a PG year, either at a prep school (any chance you’d be desirable to them for lacrosse?) or via an extra year of high school abroad (i.e. through AFS). It sounds like you have enough French under your belt to do this in a French-speaking country if you wanted to. You could then apply with both junior and senior grades on the books - two good years in a row - plus the additional rigor of being enrolled in additional AP-level classes abroad, and achieving fluency in your target language, and a broadening year of life experience that colleges could see as an additional asset.
None of this is to say that you can’t go straight to college after this year; I just don’t think you’re well-positioned as an elite-school ED applicant for the reasons I already discussed, and an extra year could strengthen that position significantly.
Another line of thinking to consider is that it sounds as if you’ve really found a passion already. Do you hope to pursue a career in disaster relief? If so, are you sure you want a more “generalist” liberal arts education at a school that doesn’t have any specialty programs in your field of interest? You could dive right into a major in your field at a larger school; here’s one example: https://ccie.ucf.edu/public-administration/emergency-management/ba-bs/ UCF has a fantastic honors college, which does consider test scores, so maybe you could get into Burnett Honors directly, and if not, there’s a path to get in as a sophomore. I completely understand if you’re sure you want the LAC experience; just running an example of the alternative up the flagpole. (It’s also a top school for aerospace, which seems to be an interest for you too - even non-STEM majors are noted to have a pipeline to aviation-related employment.)
If you definitely want to go all-in for Bates, and you don’t have another ED school in mind for the ED2 cycle, I would weigh the merits of waiting and applying ED2 to Bates. That way you’ll have the whole fall semester locked in before they assess your ED application, which could be more advantageous than applying ED1 and, at best, getting deferred to RD.