Active Minds Announces Its 50th Campus Chapter

Washington, DC – Sep 28, 2006 Just a couple of weeks into the fall 2006 semester, Active Minds has achieved an historic milestone – its 50th campus chapter.

Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado joins the Active Minds network as its 50th national chapter. A small public school in rural Colorado, Western State College was founded in 1911 and is known for 360 degrees of beautiful mountains surrounding the campus. Western joins Regis University, Colorado State University, and University of Colorado-Colorado Springs as just one of four campuses involved in the Active Minds program in the state of Colorado. Active Minds’ entire network of member schools includes four members of the Ivy League, nineteen schools with an enrollment of over 10,000 students, and seven commuter colleges.

Active Minds on Campus

In 25 states plus the District of Columbia and Canada, Active Minds serves as the only resource for college students seeking to educate their peers about issues of mental health and mental illness. In the past five years, the campus program has engaged over 500 new young adult mental health advocates and reached over 250,000 students with educational and awareness-raising programming. Members of mental health task forces, outspoken advocates, and change-agents on campus, Active Minds’ student leaders are a tremendous force now on 50 campuses nationwide. Plans are in place to expand the program to 100 college campuses by the end of the 2006-2007 school year.

About Active Minds, Inc.

Active Minds is the nation’s only grassroots organization dedicated to raising mental health awareness among young adults (ages 18 – 24) as they transition from adolescence to adulthood – when they are at the peak of their emotional and mental vulnerability. Within a span of threeyears, Active Minds has become the young adult voice in mental health advocacy and the organizational catalyst for young adult mental health awareness on college and university campuses. The organization was founded in 2001 by Alison Malmon, then a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, following the suicide of her only sibling, twenty-two year old brother Brian Malmon a year earlier. Troubled that her brilliant and popular brother had struggled with depression in silence, even though he maintained a full schedule of extra curricular activities and a superior grade point at Columbia University, Alison was convinced that stigma and lack of information kept Brian from seeking help. Determined to combat the stigma and address the lack of awareness about mental illnesses that most often strike young people at the pinnacle of their educational careers, Alison launched a program to promote mental health awareness on her campus. Just two years later, Alison created the 501(c)3 organization which now works to promote student advocacy and dialogue on college campuses nationwide.