Backpacks near Novack increase mental health awareness

By Isha Flores, The Dartmouth Staff | 4/24/11 7:29pm

“Send Si­lence Pack­ing,” a dis­play of back­packs rep­re­sent­ing the 1,100 lives lost to sui­cide on col­lege cam­puses every year, elicited a very re­ward­ing emo­tional re­sponse from Dart­mouth stu­dents, ac­cord­ing Katie Ed­kins ’12, the pres­i­dent of Dart­mouth's Ac­tive Minds — a lead­ing na­tional non-profit ded­i­cated to ad­vo­cat­ing men­tal health aware­ness on col­lege cam­puses.

The “Send Si­lence Pack­ing” event demon­strated the im­por­tance of speak­ing up about men­tal health aware­ness, ac­cord­ing to the event’s co­or­di­na­tor Gabrielle Forestier ’14.

“I think the sheer num­ber of back­packs on the walk­way made stu­dents re­al­ize sui­cide is an issue that af­fects every­one, whether it’s your best friend, or the boy who sits near you in the li­brary,” Forestier said in an email to The Dart­mouth.

The ex­hi­bi­tion was part of a larger trav­el­ing dis­play that will stop at 14 dif­fer­ent col­leges in nine states over a five-week pe­riod. Bran­don Do­main, who is part of the na­tional Ac­tive Minds group, stood by the event de­spite oc­ca­sional snow flur­ries.

Do­main said the group has been on the road since the end of March and that Dart­mouth was the 10th stop.

Ed­kins said she was very touched by the re­sponse of Greek or­ga­ni­za­tions and other stu­dent groups that of­fered to help fund the event, which was also par­tially funded by the Coun­cil on Stu­dent Or­ga­ni­za­tions.

“We were re­ally im­pressed with the re­sponse from our peers,” she said. “Many houses went out of their way to help us and even after the event, peo­ple kept thank­ing us.”

Ed­kins ex­plained that men­tal health aware­ness is a very im­por­tant con­cern at Dart­mouth, even though it is not gen­er­ally per­ceived to be a great issue.

“I think [men­tal health aware­ness] is not some­thing that gets talked about at Dart­mouth,” Ed­kins said. “From the first day you get to Dart­mouth, you’re sur­rounded by happy peo­ple and some­times peo­ple who are strug­gling think that they are the only ones.”

Many book­bags were ac­com­pa­nied by a story from a sui­cide sur­vivor. While some of the sto­ries noted that the vic­tim had dis­played signs of de­pres­sion or men­tal ill­ness, many ex­pressed com­plete sur­prise at the sud­den death of a dear friend or rel­a­tive.

The dis­play cited many sur­pris­ing sta­tis­tics — 60 to 80 per­cent of teenagers who suf­fer from de­pres­sion re­main un­treated, for ex­am­ple. Forty-four per­cent of col­lege stu­dents have ex­pe­ri­enced de­pres­sion that made it very dif­fi­cult for them to func­tion.

“Ini­tially, there was some con­cern that the dis­play wasn’t rel­e­vant to Dart­mouth, since the school hasn’t lost a stu­dent to sui­cide,” Forestier said. “And while that’s a great state­ment to be able to say, it doesn’t re­ally re­flect the truth of the mat­ter. There are stu­dents who at­tempt sui­cide every year and it’s one of those things that gets brushed under the rug.”

Forestier added that the only way to ini­ti­ate real change would be to raise aware­ness and let vic­tims know that they are not alone. Both Ed­kins and Forestier stressed the issue of shame as­so­ci­ated with men­tal ill­ness. Ed­kins said one of Ac­tive Minds’ mis­sions is to re­move the stigma linked to men­tal ill­ness.

<="" img="">