In honor of National Suicide Awareness Month, the Marshall University Counseling Center sponsored We Are…Here For You Day to provide mental health information and resources to students.
Marshall University Counseling Center, along with the Psychology Department, built a better men’s fraternity that helped spread the word, make goodwill, herd center – deals with athletes and their mental health, confronts hunger food bank and prevents suicide WV addressed individual Booths give students the resources and information they need about the mental health services offered by the university and provide free groceries, hygiene products, snack bags and laundry detergent on Wednesday, September 14th.
We Are…Here for You Day lets students know that so many people on campus are there for them and all the amazing services that Marshall has to offer.
“We’re a community and we’re here to help,” said Lindsey Beck, Clinical GA for the Department of Psychology.
“Events like this are important because when I was an undergraduate, I didn’t know anything about the Counseling Center or that it was offered to students for free,” said Destinee Legget, an intern at Marshall’s Counseling Center. “A lot of people don’t even know where Prichard Hall is, so I think it’s important to educate the public and just remind people that mental health matters.”
“It’s important to get the word out that depression is a thing because some people don’t believe it,” Legget said. “People may have suicidal thoughts and don’t want to talk about it. It’s important to me to educate the African American community in particular because they don’t like to talk about mental health.”
In addition to providing students with free groceries, hygiene products, and mental health resources, the West Virginia Suicide Prevention Booth distributed promotions using the new 988 number and the Suicide Prevention text line: 741741. They also informed students about clear signs of depression and suicide, that they might be looking for to help their loved ones.
“The good thing is noticing a person, and if you know them and they’re acting kinda weird, you might say something like ‘I give up’, ‘The world would be better off without me,’ ‘I can’. Don’t do it anymore’, or maybe people who have never used drugs start using, their looks and hygiene deteriorate, if they withdraw from you or someone else, these could be signs that something is up going,” said Mark Mason, intervention specialist at Suicide Prevention West Virginia. “It’s okay to be curious; It’s always okay to ask this question, “Are you contemplating suicide?” Because asking this question can open the floodgates for that person to let go of what’s going on. So it’s okay to say that seven-letter word: suicide.”
Mason wants everyone to know it’s okay to talk about your mental health and seek help.
“There is help out there and it’s okay to get help, just like if you break your hand you want to go to the hospital and have it fixed. So if you’re dealing with mental health issues, it’s okay to seek counseling. It’s okay to get help,” Mason said.
Mason wants to ask all students and faculty members to put the 988 number and 741741 text line number on their phones so they can be seen by their students and them.
