On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Alliot came alive as students pasted messages of self-worth onto mirrors, planted flowers, and carefully poured liquid out of alcohol bottles, attempting to create the perfect shot. As hundreds of students filtered in and out, they were greeted by tables full of students, faculty, and community members, asking them to participate in activities centered around their mental health.
This was Fresh Check Day, a yearly event set up by the Saint Michael’s College chapter of Active Minds to raise mental health awareness and decrease the stigma around the topic. Active Minds is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the stigma around mental health, especially on college campuses where mental illness is a major problem and suicide is the second leading cause of death among students. Also, 39 percent of students in college experience a significant mental health issue, such as depression.
The Saint Michael’s College chapter of Active Minds is moving away from their usual model for the club, which was a meeting every two weeks, to more event-based work like Fresh Check Day. They hope that this new approach will bring further awareness to their message and allow more people to use the resources that they offer. This shift in programming for the chapter came after co-president’s Maddy Moore ‘19 and Hannah Mishrinky ‘19 went to the Active Minds National Conference, a two day event in Washington D.C., where the various Active Minds chapters met to discuss mental health issues in college.
”While we were there we realized we wanted to revamp the club because we had seen attendance start to go down. So we wanted to collaborate with various areas of campus and try to pull in people from different groups,”said Moore.
This was true for Sophomore Hannah Wilmot ’21, who went to Fresh Check Day without previously knowing much about Active Minds. Wilmot focused carefully as she poured the perfect measurement for a shot of vodka at the “know your limit” table.
“I would definitely check out a meeting after coming to this event. It brought up a lot of important insights about mental health, which I think is sometimes lacking on campus,” Wilmott said.
“Before we were doing bi-weekly meetings, so we were engaging a smaller number of students consistently so the changes this year are focused on doing larger events that engage more people across campus” said Assistant Dean of Students Catherine Welch, who acts as the advisor to Active Minds.
”The leadership team is trying to see how Saint Michael’s students want to have the conversation and how to have the conversation with the most amount of students. Less of having to go to a meeting once a month, but more of what are the creative ways can we interact with them,” Welch said.
Activities include putting information in the “Stall Street Journal”, and doing more tabling where they just plant a seed as people pass by in Alliot, Welch said. “ They’also ran the “How Are You Really?” event last November and that drew a couple of hundred students, and was like a coffee hour event.”
“I’m really excited about the events we have coming up and the turnout for the events, just knowing that people feel safe in this environment,” said Emily LaCroix ’21, who was working at one of the tables for Fresh Check Day, where students were given a plant that they were told to water daily in order to remind them to take care of themselves.
“Our overall motivation and goal behind everything is to eliminate the stigma around mental health,” Moore said. “You want to be able to come forward because it is not something you should have to keep to yourself. There is this stigma around getting the help that you need which prevents people from taking action. We want to give people a comfortable environment because we do have these resources to help.”