On Wednesday night students engaged in a discussion revolving around the importance of supporting mental health in a college environment.
Brooke Poling, a graduate assistant at the Smith Career Center, helmed the conversation with an hour-long presentation on the mental health resources available at Bradley, indicating their importance by highlighting how college stressors impact all of us.
Bradley’s chapter of Active Minds, a nonprofit mental health awareness organization for students, hosted the guest speaker event as one of many planned throughout the year.
Active Minds has chapters located at high schools and colleges nationwide, and Bradley’s chapter has more events planned throughout the year.
Poling’s presentation highlighted the system of resources available for Bradley students that allows each student to get the specific help that they need.
“It’s great that we have a lot of resources on campus for mental health,” said Lauren Urschel, freshman dietetics major and communications manager of Bradley’s chapter. “It’s really important that Bradley has these resources and that we have a speaker that’s willing to talk about it.”
Poling further emphasized the significance of the resources’ community-wide reach by detailing various facts about how students are impacted by mental illness, stating that while 20 percent of Americans experience mental health conditions during college, 50 percent of American adults face them at some point in their lives and 75 percent of all conditions develop by age 24.
“We need to take care of ourselves in college,” Poling said. “Filling your tank by taking care of yourself is a major aspect.”
With the continuing prevalence of the stigma around mental illness, the discussion leaders saw informing students about their options as early on as possible to be crucial.
“Freshmen learn about it, but then you forget because you’re doing all these other things,” Poling said. “There are a lot of resources on campus and sometimes students aren’t necessarily aware of how much there really is.”
Individual counseling is conducted with one of six on-staff therapists (with optional off-campus psychiatrists); appointments can be scheduled through call or email and take place in the Counseling Center, in the basement of the Markin Center. Alternatively, group counseling is a student-centered process where students with similar symptoms can give feedback and support one another.
Current resources include individual counseling and group counseling. The Counseling Center can be reached at 309-677-2700 or at 309-677-3200 in case of an after-hours emergency. To get in the know, visit https://www.activeminds.org/chapter/bradley-university.
Who taught you to declare there is a stigma to mental illnesses?
What do you accomplish by complying?
Please appreciate, you are not required to participate. No one is.