Author: Noel Hemphill
Students are making plans to start a chapter of Active Minds, an organization dedicated to mental health awareness, at Occidental next year. Dana Rust (first-year) and psychology major Mikayla Branz (sophomore) reinvigorated the group in order to provide Occidental students access to resources, information and exposure to mental health care while at school.
Active Minds is a national non-profit organization that works with college students to advocate for mental health awareness and remove the stigma associated with the subject. According to the Active Minds website, the group was started in 2000 at the University of Pennsylvania by then-student Alison Malmon, following the suicide of her brother, who struggled with schizoaffective disorder. Inspiration for a new chapter at Occidental came from a similar place for Rust.
“When I came home over winter break, my best friend had dropped out of college and was severely depressed,” Rust said. “She told me that she didn’t feel like she could talk about what she was going through to anyone at school; she didn’t know what resources she could take advantage of; and she felt she was alone in her struggle. She said she wished they had talked about mental health at freshman orientation just like they talked about alcohol and sex. That got me thinking about my own school.”
Rust’s main goal for Active Minds is to raise awareness about mental health, promote positive mental health and wellness, provide education about the signs and symptoms of mental health disorders, encourage students to reach out for help and erase the taboo that often accompanies the subject.
“Approximately 50 percent of college students face depression so serious they feel they cannot function. We want to tell people these are the resources you have and you don’t need to feel shame,” Rust said.
Active Minds plans to achieve their goals with a presentation during Orientation Week, an open mic night for stories from mental health survivors and advocates and an informative poster campaign.
Rust was motivated to work with other students to create change on this issue after seeing Branz’s “Friends Just Ask” presentation during orientation. In the presentation Branz suggested looking out for friends while going through the difficulties of college. Rust was inspired to create more of these presentations, this time on the issue of mental health, and found that other students and faculty supported this idea.
“It struck me that mental health was not a topic of discussion at Occidental. I quickly realized that though mental health is not being discussed, that doesn’t mean it is not an issue Occidental students face. I began talking to administrators, and my idea quickly expanded into a full club and campaign,” Rust said.
A mental health club on campus is not new to Occidental. Emmons Health Center pushed the creation of an Occidental Active Minds chapter four years ago. When it fell apart, Matt Calkins, Director of Counseling Services, concluded that a student-run Active Minds would be much more successful.
“[Active Minds] is much more powerful when there is a student behind it when they are initiating the group and the messages are coming from them,” Calkins said.
Calkins said the current resources available to students include individual and group therapy and psychiatric evaluations for medications. Calkins emphasized that Emmons currently works predominantly in prevention-based work focused on strengthening the campus community as a whole. However, Calkins also recognizes the limitations of Occidental’s counseling services.
“We don’t have solutions; we have services, and we do outreach and a lot of prevention-based work. We would like to do more,” Calkins said.
The current chapter of Active Minds has received a great deal of support. More than 80 students responded to Rust and Branz’s email ad in the “root” in just a week’s time. This sort of response gives Branz hope about the Occidental community’s desire to create positive changes.
“There have been so many people who responded, and they all want to make a difference, and I’m really excited,” Branz said.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
