Club Feature: Active Minds
In the past few weeks, Exeter has initated a lot of discussion about mental health awareness, with an assembly fully devoted to informing students about the issue and a project called “Post Secret,” where Exonians wrote down their secret feelings on cards that were displayed anonymously in Agora. In the middle of all of this was the Active Minds club, who initiated and supervised these events with one goal in mind: to increase awareness and create a conversation about mental health at Exeter.
The club did not expect to see as much of a reaction from the student body as they have in such a short amount of time, which shows that there is a need and want for an open discussion here on campus. However, the goal of Active Minds does not end at discussion. Rather, the club aims to take steps towards removing the stigma surrounding mental health.
“On campus, I think the real problem is stigma and lack of knowledge,” upper and co-head Kyra Citron said. “As a community, we need to have more awareness about mental health issues and treat them as equal to issues of physical health. There are a lot of particular things that the Exeter community needs to work on in regards to stigma, but the first step is the conversation and the acknowledgement that one exists.”
Acknowledgement of the stigma and initiation of discussions are not easy to achieve at a big and busy place like the Academy. Some people may worry about how their friends and their school will view them if they decide to get help from the services offered here at Exeter, and Active Minds has started several awareness events and projects that aim to aid in this goal of understanding.
“The goal of the club is to force a dialogue on campus about mental illness that currently isn’t happening,” upper and co-head Hanan Lane said. “Awareness events are so important because they make people stop to think about an issue that affects such a large portion of students on this campus, but is often ignored.”
Such events range from the “Stamp out Stigma” posters displayed for National Day Without Stigma to movie showings in the academy center to raise awareness for seasonal affective disorder. However, the club not only focuses on mental illnesses, but also works for the mental well being of all students on the Exeter campus, whether they are struggling with mental illness or not.
“We offer support for those who are struggling while also maintaining grades and friends and a general outward appearance of competence,” Lane said. “But as a campus we are quick to write off those who don’t seem to be managing. The pressure to appear perfect all the time prevents us from being open about how debilitating mental illness can be.”
Aiding students who reach out for help, whether it’d be from Active Minds or just the health center, requires resources such as psychologists or medications. According to club advisor and Health Services Coordinator Sarah Kelly, many students are not aware that these options exist at Exeter.
“There is a lack of knowledge about the opportunities that we have here on the Exeter campus. People may not know that we have full time counselors here, we are able to refer them to counselors off campus, and the multitude of other possibilities that students can benefit from,” she said. “The main problem is just knowing what students can do to get help.”
However, you can never have too much help. Another one of the goals of Active Minds is to expand the amount of resources Exeter provides for students who may need help.
“We have also been talking about how we can improve the resources for mental health at Exeter,” senior Lily Hayes said. “Some of things that have been brought up are changing the hours students can pick up meds from the health center, and also making this process more confidential, having more psychologists available and better advertising for the services, so students don’t assume they'll automatically be placed on medical leave for reaching out.”
Even though resources are becoming more available at Exeter, Active Minds recognizes that a large part of getting more kids to utilize the opportunities on campus is to encourage students to come to a conclusion that there is something wrong, and that they need help.
“Students feel that they should be so perfect in everything that sometimes they cannot admit to themselves that they are having a hard time,” club advisor Jeanne Stern said. “They do not want to be pinned as someone with a weakness and Active Minds is working to fix this.”
In all of these goals, the Academy’s Active Minds club is not alone. As the Exeter chapter of a national club, Active Minds receives ideas and projects from the club which functions through other university and high school chapters alike.
However, no matter the amount of advice they get from the national club, or how many projects they initiate, Active Minds would not be accomplishing their goals without student interaction. Discussion is their number one priority, and in order to enrich the discussion, more students are always welcome, according to Citron.
“We have a lot of plans for the end of this year and continuing into next year,” she said. “Every idea starts with the conversation so we always welcome new people to our meetings every Monday in the Seabrook Room of Elm Street Dining Hall.”