Mental health awareness month

Discussions of mental health reverberate across campus as February spotlights Duke’s first ever Mental Health Awareness Month. A partnership between Duke Student Government, Counseling and Psychological Services and Duke Student Wellness, the program seeks to raise awareness about, and offer a more nuanced way of understanding, issues of mental health. The month’s programs include workshops about stress, opportunities to learn about resources to help yourself and others and a student-faculty panel that grapples with these issues. We commend and stand behind the goal of the month to reduce stigma surrounding mental health and illness on campus. However, raising awareness and starting the discussion are only the first steps to changing a campus culture that avoids such issues.

A recent study surveying first-year students around the country found that one in 10 students are depressed—a prevalence that suggests deeper influences of campus environments on the well-being of its students. At Duke, the campus culture surrounding issues of mental health is one of silence. Certainly, it is a nuanced environment where one’s exposure to and openness about such issues are dependent on one’s social circles and specific identity markers. For the majority of students, however, the timeworn pressure toward “effortless perfection”—the pervasive myth that one must exude perfection inside and outside the classroom, on the sports field and in the club meeting, all without expending the slightest effort—foments an environment inhospitable to opening up and sharing one’s challenge. The two-fold perception that one must hide one’s flaws and that issues of mental health are seen as flaws engrain a problematic mindset that discourages students from reaching out, which in turn perpetuates the silence and perception of being alone.

Yet, the campus silence around issues of mental health goes beyond the pressure to maintain a façade of effortless calm and collectedness. Rather, the stigma Mental Health Awareness Month seeks to address is the very real aversion to discussions about depression and anxiety amid a culture that assumes mental ableism and erasure of non-neurotypical, or otherwise mentally normative, challenges.

Mental Health Awareness Month is an important step toward combatting the culture of silence on campus. The month’s programs, along with photo campaigns like the “What I Be Project” and student panels that provide illness narratives, raise awareness of issues concerning the mental diversity on campus and begin important discussions among all students, whether or not they suffer from a mental illness. Such dialogue creates the potential for community building and lessens the feeling of isolation.

However, raising awareness and discussion is only the first step. Dialogue must be coupled with awareness about resources available to students in need. For these reasons we applaud the efforts of Mental Health Awareness Month. Its focus—not only on raising awareness, but also linking students to resources like Peer for You, the Women’s Center, Duke Reach, You’re Not Alone and the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity—is a vital in breaking the silence of issues involving mental health. As the month of February draws to a close, we urge students to take the mantle beyond the month, beyond photo campaigns and beyond panels, to instead foster a permanent campus culture that promotes treatment and psychological and emotional health.