Hello, Haverford students! Welcome to the official blog for Haverford College’s brand new chapter of Active Minds. For those of you don’t know, Active Minds is a national nonprofit focused on mental health advocacy and suicide prevention. It was founded 15 years ago by a student at University of Pennsylvania, and now has over 450 student-led chapters on high school and college campuses around the country. Active Minds really focuses on trying to start conversations about mental illness as well as reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues. You can learn more about Active Minds and their story here.
Active Minds at Haverford College is now a registered campus chapter, and we hold weekly meetings on Tuesdays from 8:00-9:00 pm in VCAM 102. Since chapters are led by students, we’re the ones making decisions about what we want to address on campus. We’ve already had several meetings, and members have brought up Haverford-specific issues including making appointments at Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and getting accommodations from Access and Disability Service (ADS), as well as the additional stress experienced by Customs Folk. On top of these problems, as Haverford students we have to contend with all the usual factors affecting mental health in college. Especially at a small, academically rigorous school like Haverford, it can feel difficult to balance your mental health with things like schoolwork, extracurriculars, part-time jobs, and familial obligations. It’s even harder if you have an ongoing mental health issue to deal with as well.
All that being said, Active Minds at Haverford exists to help students raise awareness, provide resources, and start conversations about mental health on campus and nationally. As a community, Haverford can only grow stronger from engaging openly with these issues. None of us is alone, and we shouldn’t have to feel alone in our experiences with mental health and mental illness. Hopefully this blog will become a place for us to express our thoughts and opinions, as well as share advice and resources specific to life at Haverford. We’d love to hear what you have to say, whether it’s via email or at a weekly meeting.
Sincerely,
Charlotte Scott, Rachel Spitzer, Althea Sellers, Arielle Schultz, and Anna Bacharach
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