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…
But first– check the link to some of my previous posts to get an idea of what I do in this series. Without further ado, here’s something that made me feel something this week: “Give It Up” By KC and The Sunshine Band! What a bop! Though this blog post will be multidimensional, it won’t…
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, or at least that’s the idea. After a long semester of hard classes and a finals week full of sleepless nights, going home to Mom and Dad waiting with your favorite meal and a smile sounds like just what you need. However, that isn’t the case for…
Active Minds is the largest nonprofit in the United States mobilizing youth and young adults to transform mental health norms across society.