Picture yourself walking on campus. You aren’t in any sort of rush since you just finished your last class of the day. You are walking in between the Carmichael Student Center and the campus green when something catches your eye: a backpack. You don’t think much of it until you realize that it’s not alone. Strewn all over the campus green, hundreds of backpacks lie. Students peruse the backpacks, sometimes kneeling to examine a backpack for what seems like an awkwardly long time.
Curiosity gets the better of you, so you approach the backpacks and soon notice every backpack has a small packet of paper and a picture. Scanning one of the leaflets, you soon realize that each of the backpacks splayed out in front of you symbolizes a student who has lost their battle with mental illness. Every backpack and every picture set out on the green in remembrance of a suicide victim; each story painstakingly written in the hopes that displaying these stories will prevent another one from having to be written.
This demonstration exists and is called Send Silence Packing. Send Silence Packing is a program that tours college campuses all around the nation every semester, bringing with it these backpacks and stories. Furthermore, Send Silence Packing brings awareness to everyone it reaches. It spreads awareness of the mental health and suicide struggles that plague students across the nation. Send Silence Packing is just one of the many programs to which Active Minds devotes resources to start the conversation about students’ mental health.
Active Minds is a national, nonprofit philanthropy dedicated to ending the stigma around mental health conditions for high school and college students. Founded in 2003 by Alison Malmon after losing her brother to suicide, Active Minds has over 550 chapters in high schools and colleges around the nation, including one here at Kennesaw State.
Active Minds at Kennesaw State
Active Minds has been around at Kennesaw State for a while, but only became active again in 2017. Chapter Co-President Patrick Thomas recalled how a good friend of his was a big driving force to jumpstarting Active Minds back up at Kennesaw and getting Thomas to join.
“Growing up, I didn’t know too much about mental health,” Thomas said. “My sister suffered a lot with her mental health issues, so I didn’t really know how to handle it.”
Since joining Active Minds, Patrick has learned a lot about mental health tips and signs, as well as a lot about himself.
“I’ve been going to different events and I learned that I have super high test-anxiety,” Thomas said.
Thomas always suspected something was wrong since he would freak out before and during exams, but he never really knew it was common or that it had a name. Chapter events at Kennesaw have information like this available, but Thomas is prouder of the atmosphere.
“The main thing that I love about Active Minds, and the one thing I’ve heard from our members that they love, is that we serve as a safety net,” Thomas said. “Our events are homey.”
Active Minds on a National Level
Thomas, along with Co-President Simone Madden, Treasurer Miya Haney, other student leaders and faculty advisor Dr. Sheldon Rifkin coordinate with Chapter Manager Robyn Suchy at Active Minds’ national office to devise plans and design activities specifically tailored to KSU.
Suchy is one of only 13 full-time staff at the Active Minds national office. He has been involved with Active Minds for roughly 10 years now and has loved every moment of it. One of Suchy’s favorite parts of his job is communicating with the biggest, most consistent parts that comprise Active Minds: their chapters.
“Our mission is to empower young people to advocate for mental health and feel confident and comfortable talking about their mental health and their struggles,” Suchy said. “Something our executive director likes to say is that we are teaching the new generation how to lead conversations about mental health and mental wellness, and I feel that.”
Active Minds and NSCS
Thomas looks forward to collaborating with other organizations as much as possible starting next semester. As a marketing student, he knows that collaboration is a great method for increasing awareness for each of the participating organizations. One such collaborative effort could be with an Active Minds partner organization and honors society that also has a chapter at KSU: the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.
Kennesaw NSCS President Amelia Hodge, and other NSCS officers have excitedly talked about working with Active Minds at KSU to bring Send Silence Packing to campus.
“Being a student who struggles with mental health and having lost several friends and family members to suicide, even the promotional video for [Send Silence Packing] is moving,” Hodge said. “I’d just love to bring the real thing to Kennesaw.”
Hodge also serves on KSU’s Student Government Association as the senator for students with disabilities, so she has strings to pull for fundraising the $5,000 necessary to bring the demonstration to campus.
The Future of Active Minds at Kennesaw State
Thomas, a senior this year, is dedicated to preventing the chapter from going dormant once he and the other student leaders graduate. As a result, Active Minds at KSU is also looking for students to fill open officer positions for the coming semesters. Although he will be graduating soon, Thomas plans to keep in contact with the new student leaders and Dr. Rifkin, so the organization is looking for active members to rise to the occasion to lead the chapter and keep it alive.
“As an organization, member-wise, we’ve always been growing,” said Thomas. “Going forward, we’re looking at who’s going to be serious about this.”
Everybody is impacted by mental health struggles in one form or another. If you want a space to talk about your struggles or just want to learn tips about dealing with mental health problems around you, then joining Active Minds at KSU could be the perfect opportunity you didn’t know existed. For more info on Active Minds and mental health, check out their website.
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