Students gathered together on Olin Quad Wednesday night to bring awareness to mental illness.
The Student Health Advisory Committee (SHAC), Theta Chi Fraternity and brAvery, an organization which deals with raising awareness for suicide prevention, hosted the event, “A Light In the Darkness: A Walk for Suicide Prevention,” as a way to remind students to take care of themselves as the semester starts to get stressful.
“It’s important to bring awareness to [suicide] as well as just focus more on mental health in general, especially with finals coming up,” Nicole Pearl, president of SHAC, said.
In addition to showing support for the cause, hot chocolate, stress balls, glow sticks, adult coloring books and T-shirts were given out to everyone that participated in the event.
“We wanted something [to give out] that obviously had something to do with the event and … go with our message, which is to promote mental health and suicide awareness,” Pearl, a junior psychology major, said.
Pearl said involving other organizations as well as offering free items helped spread the word to students to get them to participate in the walk, which was held for the first time this week.
Junior electrical engineering major Sean Miller said he came to the walk for suicide prevention because he thinks showing support for these issues is important.
“Honestly, I always check out events I see [happening] on campus,” Miller said. “A lot of the time, they’re actually [doing these events] to raise awareness or money for some very valid issue.”
Pearl said SHAC, Theta Chi and brAvery wanted to make sure information and statistics about mental illness and suicide were provided for the students who came in order to bring awareness to the issue, but also to show students who suffer from mental illness that they are not alone.
“That’s another reason why we decided to bring together multiple organizations: because there’s a lot of resources that people can use if they want help,” Pearl said.
Because of the large turn-out at the event, Miller said he would most likely attend another event like this.
“People dying is probably the most important issue,” Miller said.
Pearl said for the future she would love to make the suicide prevention walk an annual event so students can continue to raise awareness and support for those with mental illness.
