Another successful Active Minds National Conference is in the books! This year’s theme was Bridging Gaps: Changing the Culture in the Everyday, and over the two days more than 600 students, chapter advisors, professionals, and advocates came together to learn how to do just that. This being my first conference, I was excited to spend…
It’s that time of the year again. The aisles of your local CVS are lined with pink and red candy hearts , The Notebook is constantly playing on HBO, and of course: article and blog post after blog post is being written about how to enjoy being single. This is not one of those blog…
Content Warning: This piece contains mentions of suicide. Last month, Active Minds lost a force. I met Sue Cimbricz just a handful of months after she experienced the most extraordinary loss anyone can endure: the suicide of her oldest son, Sam. From the moment I met her and was let into her world and her…
Since it was established, Active Minds at Occidental College has been an active organization in terms of tabling and programming, and we strive to give mental health a voice on an institutional level. We aim to work with administrators by sharing information about college students’ mental health and relevant policy to strategize ways to ensure…
Content Warning: This piece contains mentions of suicide statistics. Imagine this: You don’t have enough time to get to class in the six minutes you have between periods, so you have to dip out of class to run to the bathroom. You are either in a huge rush, trying not to miss any important instruction…
Content Warning: This piece contains mentions of suicidal ideation. If thoughts come with wings and enter our minds from outside ourselves, conceived and born in a great nameless abyss that holds everything possible, good and bad, within it, that is how and from where my first thought of suicide, at age thirteen, came to me….
For college students all across the country, classes are starting back up, and it can be both an exciting and nerve-racking time of year. New classes, new syllabi, new routines, and new friends/classmates are a feature of this time of year, and adjusting to that takes time. It can also be difficult when you’re forced…
General scope of the activity: We held our first annual Mental Health Arts Contest! It was open to students across the school to submit any form of art, including written submissions, visual arts and performing arts. We had 10 submissions! Overview of school: We are a public high school from Glendale, Arizona. This is our…
I remember when I moved into my first place that was truly my own. It was the beginning of September, and my dad and I had driven 400+ miles to move into my college apartment before classes started. It was hot and muggy. I remember driving and thinking the streets in Davis were too narrow…
This week, Dr. Richard Friedman wrote an opinion piece asking the question, ‘Why are young Americans killing themselves?’ He presented the unknowns, and some of the knowns around the suicide rates and prevention methods. Then he ended with this solution: “To start, we need a major public campaign to educate parents and teachers to recognize depression…
Active Minds is the nation’s leading nonprofit organization promoting mental health awareness and education for young adults.