rockets in the night - a metaphor

Once a blog starts doing interviews, it becomes a different thing, right? It crosses that line into... not good. I tried my best to avoid that in my first interview, with Alison Malmon of Active Minds on Campus. It doesn't hurt that she has a great organization and an important story behind it.


(And their color scheme jibes with mine!)

Active Minds is the nation's only peer-to-peer organization dedicated to raising awareness about mental health among college students. They're on over 100 college campuses nationwide.

Active Minds was founded in 2001 by Alison Malmon, then a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, following the suicide of her older brother, Brian, one year earlier. Brian, also a college student, had been experiencing depression and psychosis for three years but had concealed his symptoms from everyone around him. On March 24, 2000, as Alison was wrapping up her freshman year at Penn, Brian ended his life.

Recognizing that few Penn students were talking about mental health issues though many were affected, Alison was motivated to change that culture on her campus. She wanted to combat the stigma of mental illness, encourage students who needed help to seek it early, and prevent future tragedies like the one that took her brother’s life. After searching unsuccessfully for existing groups, Alison formed the organization that became Active Minds on Campus.



I conducted this interview by email this summer.

1. [Hi Alison]. [I should have said that at the start; I was rude.]
   
   With respect to mental health, what differences do you see in students coming to college in 2008 as opposed to 2003 [when Active Minds went national]? Are they more knowledgable about mental health? More stressed?
   
   Alison: times are changing, and it’s amazing to see how much can and has changed in just a few years. Circa 2003 was when campus mental health issues first became noticed –- primarily because of a string of suicides on NYU’s campus [six student suicides in '03 and '04]. Pair that with the high-profile suicide at MIT in 2000 for which a lawsuit settled in '04/'05, and the tragedy at Virginia Tech in '07, the media has cared a lot more about mental health issues in the past 5 years than I had ever seen before.
   
   In line with that, administrators are caring more, and parents seem to be noticing more. The result, I think, is a rapid increase in knowledge about mental health among students due to increased programming and dialoguing. I do think that college students today are more knowledgeable about mental health than they were in 2003.
   
   Are they more stressed? It’s hard to say. Clearly stressors are different now than they were 20, 10, even 5 years ago. But different is not always worse. What’s clear is that students today are juggling internal pressures, external anxieties, financial burdens, and the questions of "what am I going to do with my life and how will I feel satisfied?" It’s not easy. Is it worse than in 2003? I’m not sure.



2. Active Minds is peer-to-peer. To what degree do you think that people can get mental-health assistance from their peers, as opposed to teachers/family/professionals?
   
   There is no doubt that one of the strongest factors in healing – whether it be physical or emotional – is having a support system. When talking about mental health issues, that support is strengthened because of the inherent ‘loneliness’ that accompanies the issues.
   
   While peers are not mental health professionals and should never be relied on for full-fledged mental health treatment, the ability for someone to talk to another person who he/she feels is an equal, in whatever context, and know that he/she is not alone cannot be undervalued.
   
   It’s time that we treat mental health issues as the true public health issues they are, involving peers, family members, coaches, mentors, professionals, and everyone else who comes in contact with an individual.



3. 2008 Election Question: What's the best thing we could do as a nation right now to help young people keep their mental health?
   
   We need legislators in office who understand the importance of mental health in the framework of overall health. As a nation, we need to elect the leaders of our country who give mental health the attention it deserves – in advocating for mental health parity in health care, in NIH and other research funding priorities, and in a national focus towards creating a healthier society.



4. Finally, do you think that anyone is really ever going to be able to say "I have clinical depression" and get the same kind of reaction as someone saying "I have diabetes?"
   
   I wouldn’t be in this field, doing what I’m doing, if I didn’t think that was possible. While it seems almost unattainable, we have come a long way in many fields of medicine in a short amount of time, and I believe that mental health is one of the ‘last frontiers.’
   
   I do truly believe that, in the not too distant future, mental health issues will be treated with the same dignity and respect as physical health. And I believe that the next generation, those coming up through high school and college today, will be the ones to significantly affect that change and will be the ones to know that reactions towards depression and diabetes do not have to be different.

There you go. A call to action. And Alison was really great to take her time to do this. In addition to Active Minds, which continues to expand on campuses nationwide, Alison wanted to direct people to Mind My Rights, a website that shows you what your rights are on campus in dealing with mental and emotional help.

Thanks Alison.

And, this is a LOT less important, but if you didn't know, this is how to pronounce my name. Been a long time coming.