Cady Inabinett

The University Program Council hosted a Mental Health Town Hall Tuesday, Sept. 22 via Zoom. The program brought in four guest presenters, Elena Butler, Reese Butler and Sama Bellomo from imalive.org – an online crisis prevention network – and Bee Smith from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to speak on the misconceptions surrounding mental health issues.   The program focused largely on educating participants on how to handle discussing mental health, especially suicidal thoughts, in an empathetic and helpful manner, as well as addressing and fighting the stigma surrounding these issues. This presentation has been presented as a live show on college campuses since 2010, but has been adapted to a remote format in order to comply with social distancing protocols.  The program started with participants answering a poll ranking their stress on a level of one to ten – with one being the least stressed and ten being the most stressed. Majority of student participants ranked their stress levels at six.   A large portion of the presentation then proceeded to focus on addressing myths about mental health. A game called “Fact or Fiction,” in which participants had to determine if a presented statement was true or false, was hosted.   For example, there is a commonly held misconception that suicides peak during the winter holidays – due to factors such as Seasonal Affective Disorder and increased stress. This, however, is untrue; they actually peak during the spring.   Combatting misconceptions about mental health issues helps people understand these issues more accurately and, therefore,...