Crazy. Nutbag. Lunatic. Mental illnesses carry a stigma, but one campus organization is hoping to ease the perceived disgrace through education and awareness.
Active Minds, a newly formed mental health advocacy group, hopes to support those on campus with mental illnesses and help them get the help they need. While the members have no training in counseling, the group can help point students in the right direction.
"Most mental illnesses are curable," Active Minds founder and president Amber Walker says. "But when diagnosed people think 'OK, things are going to be OK now.' It's only the beginning. A good analogy is like when you blow out your knee; you still have to do therapy."
"And there are different ways to approach mental illnesses," Active Minds secretary and psychology major Nikki Myers says. "There's talk therapy, cognitive therapy - it's not just going and taking pills. It's more of a path."
The group hopes to educate MTSU students about mental illnesses by posting flyers or posters about common mental illnesses and by inviting everyone to their meetings. Active Minds wants to share the warning signs of mental illnesses, so people showing these signs or seeing these signs in their friends can get the help they need, Myers and Walker say.
Walker also wants to let students know about the counselors on campus. Myers agrees and says the counseling centers on campus seem to be hidden. Both say that mental illnesses are common on campus.
"Stress is one of the major causes of failing, not drugs and alcohol, but stress can lead to drugs and alcohol," Walker says. "Suicide is the number two leading death of college students."
"And the life transition to college can cause anxiety and depression," Myers says.
Active Minds is actually a chapter in a larger, national organization.
Alison Malmon founded Active Minds in response to her brother committing suicide, Walker says.
According to the website, activemindsoncampus.org, Malmon's brother, Brian, dealt with depression and psychosis but concealed his symptoms from everyone around him. Brian began receiving treatment for what was later diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder, and a year and a half later, according to the Web site, he took his own life.
Malmon saw that her own campus didn't talk about mental illness, and, according to the Web site, she set out to change that by starting Active Minds. Today, there are over 20 campuses across the nation and one campus in Canada with an Active Minds chartered group, according to the Web site.
During high school, Walker says she had a major spell of depression, and her classmates thought she was weird because of it. Walker says her isolation made her want to "raise awareness about mental illness because it's not talked about." While online one day, Walker found the Active Minds Web site. She has been working for a year and a half trying to get the MTSU chapter of Active Minds approved. That was last semester.
Since Active Minds is still trying to get established, Walker and Myers say they aren't planning many big events, but they hope to have an end-of-the-semester program dealing with finals and stress relief.
The group would also like to do something in alignment with other groups on campus, Myers says.
Everyone is invited to join Active Minds.
"People think you have to be a psychology major to join, but you don't have to be," Walker says.
We're looking for people interested in the cause. Lots of people have had mental illnesses themselves or know someone who has," Myers says.
The next meeting of Active Minds is tomorrow, at 6:30 p.m. in Keathley University Center, Room 315 and every other Tuesday. The next two meetings will be general interest meetings. Walker and Myers can be reached at activeminds@mtsu.edu or on the MTSU Active Minds website at http://www.mtsu.edu/~acminds/.
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