 With Winter Quarter in full swing, Active Minds UCLA took a chance to step away from midterms and discuss mental health in a new light. During week five, all of our hard working directors and members put on an amazing initiative, titled Culture in Mind, during which we discussed the intersectionality between culture and mental health. The week consisted of daily event collaborations with various cultural groups on campus, along with a week-long photo project featured inside the Kerckhoff Art Gallery, where Bruins from different cultural backgrounds and communities were featured. The week began with our Events committee putting on a collaboration with MEChA, called Latinx/Chicanx Mental Health. The event featured a presentation describing the role of mental health in these communities and aimed to inform students about existing mental health resources both on and off campus which are available to them. An intimate and interesting discussion developed among the guests that tackled all sorts of cultural stigmas, perceptions and beliefs in the Latinx/Chicanx community and how that has influenced students’ mental health experiences. Many people from the community along with allies took the time to participate in such a great event! Tuesday, our Education committee collaborated with INDUS for the event A Focus on Mental Health in the South Asian Community. This evening was full of information, resources, and discussions about how mental health is perceived in this community, why it is perceived that way, and what we can do to change this perception. There was a short film displayed about the representation of mental health within Southeast Asian communities and insightful group discussions that included students’ personal narratives and helpful information which stemmed from the film.Thanks to our Education Committee and INDUS for sharing such amazing insight and information with our Bruin community.
Wednesday - the excitement continued as our Workshops committee collaborated with both Outwrite NewsMagazine and the LGBT Center here on campus for our event titled Embracing Queer Mental Health. This event provided a safe space for students from the LGBTQ+ community and aimed to create a comfortable environment in which narratives pertaining to struggle, pain, strength, and power from members and allies could be shared. It started with a panel of students from the Outwrite Magazine who educated a lot of our guests with their own stories, stories of others, and information that can change people’s lives. The emotion driven insight and discussions educated and comforted many people in this community along with their friends and fellow Bruins. This event highlighted mental health in a culture that faces a lot of unattended illnesses, and was extremely important to help us all grow as a community. As the week continued, all of Active Minds, led by the one and only Tania Caceres, collaborated with the Afrikan Student Union, for Black Minds Matter, in the Kerckhoff Art Gallery. The event hosted Dr. Green from CAPS who led a presentation on specific mental health perceptions, stigmas and struggles within the African American community and provided resources aimed to help the African American population here on campus. A great thank you to Dr. Green and the Afrikan Student Union for helping raise awareness about the intersectionality between mental health and the African American population through this event. We ended the week, with our Advocacy Committee collaborating with the Undocumented Student Program at UCLA, for an event titled Addressing Anxiety in the Undocumented Student Community. During this particularly volatile time, we recognize that being an undocumented student is more stressful than ever, thus this event aimed to provide not only a safe space to these students, but also give out as many resources as possible to help deal with any anxiety and stress that these times may bring. The event consisted of a student who shared his experience being an undocumented student and how his mental health has been impacted as a result of lack of resources, the current political climate and the anxieties that come with being a student at an institution such as UCLA. Followed by his remarkable narrative, Jo Pessin, a mindfulness expert, joined us for a mindfulness and stress management workshop which taught students how to release stress for students. It is an important issue to address today and everyday, thus we aim to support this community with resources and allies as much as possible. A huge thank you to Jo and Undocubruins for helping make this event possible!
Throughout the week, our Culture in Mind: Exploring the Intersectionality between Culture and Mental Health photo project was displayed in Kerckhoff Art Gallery, portraying the many cultures that our Bruins come from and how each student’s mental health matters. Active Minds UCLA members, directors, SWC directors, our campus’ Bruin Bear, members from the Afrikan Student Union, The Beautiful Mind Project, the Muslim Student Association, Global Siblings, the Dashew Center, sororities, GRIT Peer Coaching, INDUS, Outwrite Magazine, the LGBT Center, undocumented students, USAC representatives and general reps, Bruin RunWalk, Bruin Consent Coalition, Body Image Task Force and many more organizations + members of various cultural communities were a part of this photo campaign. We thank everyone who participated in this project as it would not have been made possible without them. The purpose of this campaign was to advocate for everyone’s mental health but as well as mental health within cultural communities which is often overlooked. What we all achieved by bringing Bruins from different organizations and cultural communities is a beautiful testament to how when we build bridges between communities we are stronger together. We are proud to also report that our Culture in Mind photo campaign will soon be featured inside CAPS and will continue to be a great representation of the Bruin community and all the intersectional identities that make us who we are. Active Minds UCLA would like to thank all of the students who attended our events during the week. We hope that these events were insightful and a space for members of cultural communities as well as allies to learn about mental health representations in many communities and cultures, the various existing mental health resources, and the important steps we can take in order to lessen the mental health stigma within these communities so we may better support one another at UCLA.
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 It’s 2018 Stigmafighters! We hope Fall quarter treated you well, and that you’re all settled in for the next two quarters to come! We have exciting things planned for Active Minds these next few months. But first, let’s take a look at everything we did this quarter! The quarter started with an awesome opportunity to be a part of the 13 Reasons Why program in which actor Justin Prentice and Alisha Boe discussed the negative and positive aspects to the way the show addressed various mental health issues. As Active Minds, we were there to answer any questions and provide resources to the UCLA community. We also joined the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention at the Santa Monica Out of the Darkness Walk to provide further resources and support to the Los Angeles community, a touching way to begin the year! As the quarter unravelled and our new members joined us after the wonderful committee sorting night put on by our membership committee, we got to know each other at the pumpkin painting social in October, lots of snacks and a relaxing way to escape midterms for a few hours! Another highlight of the quarter was the amazing Mental Health Fair put on by the Events Committee. As students walked through Bruin Walk on their way to class, they stopped to play carnival games designed to educate students about various mental health topics, grab some mental health resources, and bond with fellow UCLA students. Many students took a minute to take a picture in our self-care themed photo frame, and we all know self care is always a good look! During November, we joined The Dashew Center and developed the event Bruin Resilience: Wellness Social for International Students to welcome our fellow international students to campus in hope that they could feel more at home here at UCLA. There were insightful comments made by the international student panel and allowed for students to discuss needs within the international student community, network and make new friends, and be able to address their mental health experiences to a community. In addition, our executive director was featured in a Bruin Family Insights webinar with Counseling and Psychological Services executive director Dr. Nicole Green organized by the UCLA Parent & Family Programs. The webinar was titled Bruin Family Insights - Addressing Mental Health & Wellness and provided Bruin Families an opportunity to understand how the pressures of college influence student mental health. Families were able to learn to recognize signs of distress and mental health concerns in their student and learn strategies for helping students cope with these issues. Active Minds was able to offer the student perspective while Dr. Green offered a clinical perspective, fostering an important conversation surrounding student mental health.
Our last big event of the quarter was Diversity and Depression put on by the wonderful Education Committee. This event brought together people from all walks of life and explained that we are one and not the same. It was an important way to express that it doesn’t matter and will never matter what your background is, you can struggle with depression, or any other mental illness for that matter, it has nothing to do with your identity. We were lucky enough to be able to end the quarter with two inspiring guest speakers. First we had Guillermo Ojeda, a graduate student at the Luskin School of Public Affairs who informed us about his experience pursuing a mental health related career within the public affairs field. Furthermore, Active Minds is very excited to be working with him in the following quarters to develop the undergraduate to graduate mentorship program. During week 9 we had the lovely UCLA alumni, Jo Pessin treat us with great mindfulness activities, which proved to be great way to start the finals buzz. We are so grateful for the opportunity to have heard such a variety of mental health related themes throughout the quarter. To conclude the quarter on a great note we collaborated with the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital located next to the Ronald Reagan Hospital for a donation drive. Students came together to collect dozens of goods for the patients and they were delivered to the hospital before the holidays. We’d like to thank everyone who donated for their generosity. We hope all of you have found a community here within Active Minds, as we are so pleased that you are all here and look forward to the things ahead. Next quarter, our committees have some exciting events, networking nights, and workshops planned. Always remember each quarter has its ups and downs, and the Active Minds family will be here through it all. Find some time for self care even when classes seem like they are starting to crack down on you, because you are important. Thanks for all your hard work fighting the mental health stigma this quarter, and we look forward to continuing the fight in Winter quarter! National Suicide Prevention Week 2017 Ciara Kelly Content Warning: Suicide Every forty seconds, someone takes their own life. That means, by the time you read this article about six people will have died by suicide. Throughout National Suicide Prevention Week we need to honor those who we have lost to suicide, and celebrate those who are still fighting today. It’s not an easy battle to win, but when you do, it is worth it. Within the last year suicide has been a topic thrown around more than in years past. Unfortunately it has hit a lot of people personally, or if it hasn’t we’ve heard about it. We’ve seen it on Thirteen Reasons Why, we’ve felt the world grieve after Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington took his life, or we felt the power of the truth coming from Logic’s performance at the VMAs. The word suicide is everywhere, and it is not understood, it is often tiptoed around, and stigmatized - forcing those who are struggling to stay struggling. This is a sad reality, but a reality that doesn’t need to be. Thirty years ago, if someone in the family had cancer, it wasn’t discussed, if someone had AIDS it was ignored as if being sick was something to be ashamed of. Yesterday, if someone in a family took their own life it might have been brushed aside, ignored, or covered up as an “accident,” but today, if it happens, we HAVE to discuss it. The time to ignore it is over, because if a conversation can save a life, it is worth having. Too many of today’s youth take killing yourself as a joke, if you look at the majority of people’s phones under the age of 23 there are probably numerous messages on there that say “kms” or “kys” (meaning killing myself or kill yourself). This is not okay. However, it has been used so frequently that most people don’t realize the words they are actually saying, it has become a random insult that could mean nothing to you, but everything to the recipient. What we need to realize is the power of our words and the silence of our friends. These statements have no place in a colloquial conversation because words can be so much more powerful than we think and we don’t know what battles our friends are fighting. There is this myth surrounding suicide that if we talk about it, it will increase people’s suicidal thoughts and actions, however we know this isn’t true. If we discuss suicide and depression in the proper ways, educating one another and asking the right questions, studies show that suicides and suicide attempts will decrease. Even just two weeks ago, after Logic used his platform on the VMAs to discuss mental illness and suicide in such a powerful way, the suicide hotline had 50% more traffic than it usually does. Just by discussing the topic for 5 minutes on national television, he saved numerous people from taking their own life. That is amazing and this is what we need more of. People with power or people with any sort of following to make suicide and mental illness something of concern, because unfortunately it isn’t. Moreover, as the Stigmafighters we are, we realize there is this selfishness stigma that surrounds suicide. However, starting the conversation after a suicide is mentioned even briefly in any class, discussion, television show, etc. can have the power to change someone else’s view on the situation. This in turn will spread to more and more people, allowing those who are struggling with suicidal thoughts to break through the wall that is holding them back from discussing what they are going through. While fighting stigmas it becomes clear that it’s not a one person task, however the power of changing one mind, will turn into changing the minds of many, and this waterfall effect is so much more powerful than we realize. Once again, the conversation is always worth having. We’ve all faced dark times, during break-ups, after a loved one passes away, maybe even just one emotion filled night that left you crying in your room, these times come, but what we need to realize and remind each other is that these times pass. There are people who face so many more adversities than others, and this is in no way fair, as a society we need to be there for one another so no one person is struggling with no one to turn to. However, the bottom line is that pain is relative, that night you felt like your life was over can mean nothing in a matter of days, if we can all remember that, we can push suicide out of the way. This week there are a few things we need to realize and always remember, First off, your life is worth living; we will all go through really hard times, times when we feel like there is nothing or no one left. But in reality these feelings aren’t the truth, there is someone who cares about you. We need to remember it is okay to reach out for help and talk to people, they will be so grateful you did when it saves your life. But if you can’t work yourself up to talk to someone close to you, there are hotlines, and there are coworkers, classmates, and even strangers that care. It is also incredibly important for us to realize from now on that suicide is real. It happens, and you do not want to wait until it happens to someone close to you to take it seriously. You never know what is going on in someone else's mind, the battles they’re fighting, or the voices they hear, their smile may only be a disguise. We need to stop ignoring it, look for signs, get trained, educate our youth, and take it seriously. I know it is hard to talk about, but it is worth it. Start the conversation and stop suicide. If you or someone you know struggles with suicidal thoughts, please call: >>The National Suicide Prevention Hotline 1-800-273-2855. >> National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Spanish) '1-888-628-9454' >> National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (for deaf and hard of hearing) '1-800-799-4889' >> The Trevor Project Hotline '1-866-488-7386 - Get involved this week with National Suicide Prevention Week here: https://afsp.org/campaigns/national-suicide-prevention-week-2017/ - Get QPR Suicide Prevention training here: https://www.qprinstitute.com/individual-training Author: Ciara Kelly is a sophomore student at the University of California, Los Angeles and marketing director of Active Minds (UCLA Chapter). |
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