Students stopped by South Lawn over the course of three hours Thursday afternoon to participate in a “Mental Health on the Lawn” event. Hosted by Madison House’s Help Line, If You’re Reading This and National Alliance on Mental Illness on Grounds — three student organizations dedicated to providing students with the resources and help they need for a wide variety of situations relating to mental health and mental illness — the event focused on promoting a healthy and transparent mental health culture on Grounds.
The event was the first of its kind and partially served to fill the gap left by this spring’s lack of a “Fight the Stigma Week” — a week-long mental health advocacy and outreach period organized by Class Councils that usually falls towards the end of the academic year — according to Wendy Wang, a second-year Commerce student and the head of NAMI on Grounds.
Wang said that the three organizations wanted to provide students with a stress reliever before classes end and final exams start.
“It’s near the finals week season, and everybody knows how that goes, so we just wanted to come out and provide an opportunity for people to be writing stuff out,” Wang said.
Kelly Isbell, a second-year College student and Help Line volunteer, said the partnership between organizations came naturally, as all three have similar missions and goals.
“We decided to partner up with If You’re Reading This and NAMI because we all have a focus on talking about how you feel and an awareness for mental health,” Isbell said.
Isbell said the event was planned with an end goal of having “a day where we can all just have people talk about what makes them happy, what makes them feel good and just like how they’re feeling, because it’s important to talk about these things.”