At all points in life, you can never really know what someone is going through or dealing with. Mental illness can be sneaky like that. Someone seems fine on the outside but is really struggling on the inside. Thankfully, there are many organizations working to help people with mental illnesses get healthy again. One of those is Change Direction, a campaign supported by Michelle Obama. Their website shows some ways for people to keep good mental health, signs that someone may have a mental illness, what to do if someone is suffering, and some public service announcement videos. I think the campaign has a good chance to be successful. They give out clear, easy to follow steps for people to take in order to improve their mental health. They explain possible signs of a mental illness really well. In my opinion, the most important information they give are the ways to help those dealing with mental illness. A really close friend of mine at home was dealing with mental illness at one point. Along with the feeling of worry about my friend, there was this other feeling of having no idea what to do. They’re better now but at the time it was an awful feeling. Those tips would have gone a long way. I think the only real weakness of the campaign is that a lot of this is done on your own. I could see people checking in on themselves or others and just saying, “Oh, I’m fine” or “Oh, they’re fine” because they might be afraid of what it means if everything is not okay. Some college students will pay attention to this and some won’t. A lot of times, students just try to push through until they get a mental break. It’s not really healthy at all but with everything else you need to do in college it gets the job done. I think if Etown was to do a mental health campaign, they should model it after Change Direction. It would help the people who really need it.
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I definitely see your point about how they could easily lie or just not be expressive about their symptoms, although there are almost always other signs that go along with depression. For instance even if someone says their fine but are really depressed, they could also have a change in apatite, which is easy to spot especially if theres a weight difference, decreased mood, change in sleep patterns, you can usually notice if someone is not consistently getting enough sleep, or even decreased pleasure in activities they used to enjoy. Overall, I agree that a campaign like this would help everyone, no matter where you are. I personally think recognizing the symptoms is the most important part because I know you can anonymously report them to your schools counselor or even nurse, there are many people and teachers in general that are mandated reporters, so that’s an easy way to get help. I agree with you though that a program like this would help Etown simply because we already have a great campus resources for counseling and it’s even free.
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