As yet another school year kicks off, I want to draw attention to college and university campuses that are working to increase accessibility to mental health services by renaming, repositioning, and de-stigmatizing these services.
Cornell University, for one, has as a goal reaching out to international students. According to the Monitor on Psychology article on campus suicide prevention outreach from earlier this month, Cornell has developed a program that allows students to visit mental health professionals at sites that "don't have a ‘mental health' stigma attached to them, for example in academic buildings and student centers."
At the University of Michigan, "the campus mental health center is boosting its accessibility by keeping its doors open four evenings a week."
Since 2001, the organization Active Minds has been using the student voice to "change the conversation" about mental health on campuses nationwide. Students run mental health awareness, education, and advocacy efforts at over 200 campuses.
Campuses are micro-communities, so can the initiatives of campus communities serve as examples for what we might do on a larger scale?
- Could we link mental health to other health issues, like Columbia University does with Go Ask Alice!, a health Q&A Internet service? Go Ask Alice! frames mental health as "emotional health."
- Could we make mental health more a part of everyday life, so that people who find themselves in need of help do not feel different or bad about it? (Cornell's efforts to locate mental health services in places where students already hang out is one example.)
- Could we make mental health more accessible so that people with a lot to balance don't have to miss class/work/time with family to meet with someone who can help them? (As the University of Michigan is doing by keeping mental health services open later hours.)
I don't want to slight the importance of college for college's sake. If we were only to look at campuses as places where the next generation of minds are growing up, that in and of itself demonstrates the value of promoting mental health.
Additional resource: Promoting Mental Health and Preventing Suicide in College and University Settings, a publication of the Suicide Prevention Resource Center
Copyright 2009 Elana Premack Sandler, All Rights Reserved
