This week, campus mental health awareness organization Active Minds hosted its third annual Mental Health Week, which included members handing out flowers, pamphlets and snacks to students on Business Row to educate the campus on the importance of mental health.
“Active Minds believes that we need to have conversations about mental health to break the stigma surrounding mental illness,” Active Minds marketing director Josh Martin said. “We don’t want anyone to feel alone or like they are the only one going through problems, so we try to host events that encourage conversations.”
Martin said the conversations the organization gets to have with students are effective and give Ole Miss students a chance to talk about a subject that can often be uncomfortable.
On Wednesday in the Union Ballroom, Active Minds displayed the Humans of Ole Miss, a photography project with 89 individual stories about mental health and the stigmas surrounding it. These stories ranged in topic from friends or family members lost to suicide, personal battles with anxiety and lessons learned about self-love.
“Humans of Ole Miss is an idea we came up with because we wanted students to understand that they are not alone in their struggles,”Active Minds director Jessica Tran said. “Humans of Ole Miss is 89 examples of incredible people who provide light on campus and throughout the community despite whatever they may be going through, and that is such a powerful message.”
Active Minds also set up a table in the Circle to hand out free flowers to students. Tied to each flower was a card which on one side read, “Own your story & pass it on.”
On the other side of the card, under the heading “It’s okay to ask for help,” was the contact information for the University Counseling Center, RightTrack Medical Group and the Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Below, in small text, the card said, “When you’re in a dark place sometimes you think you’ve been buried. Perhaps you’ve been planted. Bloom.”
Sophomore liberal arts major Miller Carlton said it brightened her day when she was handed a flower on her way to class.
“I had a really hard Spanish composition before, and reading that sentence reminded me to take a breath and focus on the happy things that surround me,” Carlton said.
The organization also hosted Yoga in the Grove where students used yoga to see how others de-stress and practice self-care.
Active Minds has hosted the event each year since they’ve been a registered student organization on campus.
Also this week, the senior class officers announced that the 2019 Senior Class Gift would be direct donations to the University Counseling Center. Senior Class President Zach DiGregorio, Vice President Mikhail Love and Treasurer-Secretary Catrina Curtis are asking the senior class to pledge 250 individual donations to the counseling center to better help the center serve the student body’s needs.
“As seniors, we know that the college experience is not all about game days, parties and fun with friends,” the senior officers’ announcement reads. “Everyone needs help sometimes, whether it’s dealing with anxiety and depression, relationship issues, past trauma or academic concerns.”
