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April is National Stress Awareness Month and May is Mental Health Month. In honor of these important initiatives, Campus Calm invited Alison Malmon to talk with us about student-led, campus mental health advocacy efforts that are currently being carried out nationwide on university campuses.
Alison Malmon is founder and Executive Director of Active Minds, the nation's only organization dedicated to utilizing the student voice to raise mental health awareness on college campuses. Since its founding in 2003, Active Minds has become the young adult voice in mental health advocacy and the organizational catalyst for student-based mental health awareness on college and university campuses. Active Minds' chapters are changing the conversation about mental health on college campuses throughout the United States and Canada. You can visit them online at www.activeminds.org.
Maria: Alison, how many Active Minds chapters are there currently?
Alison: 193 chapters across the United States and Canada.
Maria: What causes you to be passionate about helping to end mental health stigma through Active Minds?
Alison: There are many reasons. The most poignant of them is that when I was a freshman in college, my brother Brian took his own life. He had been at a prestigious university and he started experiencing depression and psychosis in February of his freshman year. He was scared and ashamed. Somehow, he was able to mask his symptoms from everybody, including the faculty and his teachers. He had a 3.8 GPA, had become president of numerous student groups on campus. He was the typical successful student that we all strive to be. Internally, he was really struggling. We were fortunate in that Brian did go and get help from his counseling center on his university in his senior year. While we're fortunate that he did get help, it's unfortunate because it was a full three years after he started experiencing depression and psychosis.
He took his own life in March of my freshman year of college. I became very interested in the issue of campus mental health, and mental health in the young adult population. To be honest, I just got really scared because I realized that Brian and I were very similar people. If I had started experiencing what he had started experiencing, I probably would have done the same thing he had done. I probably would have kept it quiet. I probably would have been ashamed for no reason.
I was determined to help ensure that that wouldn't happen to other students. Like most people who are faced with mental health difficulties, or are faced with it in friends or family, I dove into research right after Brian died. I learned that the age of onset of most mental health disorders is generally the high school and college age. Brian's life is not unique and his experiences were not unique. Students need to know that they are not alone.
(Click here to read more about Alison and what prompted her to launch Active Minds).
Maria: Thank you for sharing that Alison and on behalf of Campus Calm, I would like to thank you for your courage in creating such a positive and needed service on college campuses. You are truly inspirational!
What distinguishes Active Minds from other national organizations that work to help end mental health stigma?
Alison: What's unique about Active Minds is that we are the only national organization that is student driven. I realized the power of the student voice. Especially with the topic of mental health, it is sometimes scary to students because we haven't really been educated about it. We tend to not want to listen to our elders. When counseling centers do mental health education activities, sometimes students just don't want to pay attention because they feel like it's not them. But when students tell their own stories, and when students do the educating, serving as liaisons between the student body and the mental health community, it's much less intimidating. It's much more empowering and it really gives students a voice.
Maria: What can students do to help end mental health stigma on their college campuses?
Alison: There are many answers to that question. From the most basic, just talk. Talk about experiences, talk about how you're feeling. Realize that you don't have to be dealing with this diagnosable mental illness on your own. You can seek help, talk to a friend about the angst or the pain that you're feeling. The more we talk, the more we can learn that we're not alone. We're all human and we all have human emotions. We all need to take care of our mental health as much as our physical health.
For those of you who are interested in getting involved, I encourage you to get involved with your school's Active Minds chapter. If there isn't a chapter on your campus, help start one.
Maria: What types of outreach and support does an Active Minds chapter offer to its student body?
Alison: The answer to that question varies from campus to campus. Active Minds chapters are registered student groups on campus that work to promote awareness and education about issues of mental health. The group functions as an advocacy group. It is not a support group. Students do not come together once a week to have a support group meeting. Instead, they come together once a week to plan events on campus.
Some of the more common events for a chapter to promote are panel discussions about a variety of mental health issues. Chapters host movie screenings featuring popular Hollywood films like A Beautiful Mind and Prozac Nation to encourage students to see their Hollywood blockbuster favorite and then have a discussion about the mental health issue that was raised. As a national organization, we support a National Stress Out Day, which occurs in April of every year.
Maria: Where can students go for further information if they want to start an Active Minds chapter?
Alison: If anyone is interested, you can always visit our site at www.activeminds.org. If you click on the "chapters" tab, you can find out how to start a chapter on your campus. If anyone is interested in learning more about mental health in college students, we have a section on what are the 12 signs to notice, how to help a friend and other resources that are geared toward helping college students.
Maria: With April being National Stress Awareness Month, it's the perfect opportunity to spotlight college stress and let students know that support is available on their campuses. Can you tell us about your National Stress Out Day program?
Alison: National Stress Out Day is actually one of the larger programs that we have. This year, it is hosted in April, the week of the 13th to the 17th. Our chapters get to pick one day or multiple days during that week to hold National Stress Out Day. The goal of the day is to educate students about serious mental illness and serious anxiety disorders, as well as basic stress release activities.
Some of the more popular activities include Oasis in the Library. A chapter will work with the library to get a room and fill the it with healthy snacks and board games so students who are in the library can come in and relax for five, ten or twenty minutes before going back to their paper or their studies. Many of our chapters will show anxiety related movies as part of a movie screening. Some chapters will bring in massage therapists and give free massages to help student relieve stress. There's also an event called Screamfest where a chapter, at 11 am or 11 pm, will organize a place on the quad or a main place on campus, for students to just come and scream. Students let it out and realize that stress shouldn't overwhelm us and that we can do fun things to make ourselves enjoy life and enjoy time.
Maria: We receive letters every day from stressed-out, high achieving students from around the world. From an outside view, these students remark that they are the academic stars, the future leaders, on track to conquer the world. Then they confess, sometimes for the first time in their lives, that they're miserable, pressured, sleep deprived, anxiety-ridden and, in some cases, physically sick. Is it safe to say that mental health affects us all, even those students who appear on paper to have it all together?
Alison: Absolutely, you can look no further than my brother's situation. He was the star that we all hoped to be. He had a 3.8 GPA, he was that guy, he was everything on campus. He was suffering immensely internally. Mental health issues affect us all. It affects the 3.8 GPA students; it affects the students who have 2.0's or 1.5's. You can look perfect from the outside, but not feel that way from the inside. It's important for everybody to be attuned to how they're feeling and what their experiences are, know that they're not alone, know that hope is out there and help is available.
Maria: How can a student tell if he/she might need some help dealing with a mental health challenge?
Alison: You do not have to have telltale signs or symptoms to go seek help. There are free counseling services available on almost every university college campus. Even if you're just a little stressed out, go and talk to somebody about it. [They] are the best people to tell you if you need more serious treatment. Seeing somebody in a counseling center is no sign of weakness, and you do not need to have a serious mental illness to go talk to somebody.
Maria: According to a 2008 mtvU study of over 2,200 college students, 71 percent of students reported that they turn to friends for help when they're in emotional distress. How can a student be a good friend to a fellow classmate in need?
Alison: I think the most important thing a student can do is just listen. Don't judge, don't try to give advice. Let your friend vent whatever he or she is feeling. As students, we're not professionals, we're not clinically trained, it's not our job to make a friend feel better. What you can do is listen and let your friend know that you're there to support him or her. Then help them get into the professional resources that he or she needs. Walk him over to the counseling center, call the counseling center and make that appointment for him, sit in the waiting room while he's there, even go in the room with him if that's something that would be helpful to him. If not the counseling center, go talk with an RA, a faculty member, or another staff member on campus.
It's also important to realize that being a caregiver of somebody with a mental health issue is also, oftentimes, overwhelming. It's important to take care of yourself just as you're taking care of your friend. Talk with a clinician if you need to talk to somebody, or talk with an adult or another friend.
Maria: If you could be the face on a billboard that high school and college students see, what are a few things you'd like to tell them about life?
Alison: That's a good question. One of the lessons I've learned is that you never know what tomorrow will bring so enjoy all you can today. There is hope that life can be amazing if you let it run its course.
© 2009 Maria L. Pascucci /Campus Calm.
About the author:
Maria Pascucci is the President of Campus Calm –
the international online-community for today's stressed-out students, and
their parents and educators. Download your Stress-Less Kit with 4 FREE
gifts at www.campuscalm.com.
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