Through a fledgling partnership with Duke Student Government, directors of Counseling and Psychological Services hope to better publicize the resources they have available to students.
DSG—in the inaugural semester of its partnership with CAPS—will launch a series of initiatives to increase student awareness of mental health resources on campus and to improve overall student access to those resources. In their first official project, members of DSG are working to put together an information sheet listing mental health resources available to students.
Although many similar informational sheets have been produced by CAPS in the past several years, they were not widely circulated, and therefore provided limited benefit to students, said Gary Glass, associate director for outreach and developmental programming.
“They’ve been produced and they’ve been available, but I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say that they’ve been out there, to be honest,” Glass said. “DSG can play a role in creating an information central around [mental health].”
He added that the prominence of DSG can help to further publicize the options provided by CAPS.
“When you have outreach by a unit at Duke University, there’s only so far that these people can get because they’re not integrated into the student population,” said junior Keizra Mecklai, DSG vice president for equity and outreach.
The new informational sheet will include resources for both crisis resources as well as resources for students with less severe issues and will focus on making a distinction between mental health and mental illness, Mecklai said.
“It’s going to be an information sheet that has two different sides,” Mecklai said. “One will be mental health and the other will be mental illness. We would want to explain to students what each of these things are and what the resources available to them are.”
This information sheet will be distributed by DSG through a number of channels in order to supplement the outreach work currently done by CAPS. Although CAPS currently has outreach efforts to raise awareness of mental health issues, Mecklai said that student-led outreach could be more effective.
In addition, DSG will be working to make popular CAPS programs, including mindfulness yoga, more widely available to students interested in participating. The initiatives will focus on a broader theme of reducing mental health stigma, and encourage all students—even those with less severe short-term issues—to take advantage of resources on campus.
“Everybody can have mental health issues regardless of whether or not they’re on medication or have a diagnosed mental health illness,” Mecklai said. “We want to make sure that students are accessing all of the resources that are available to them for any mental health issues that may come up at any time during their Duke experience.”
In addition to raising awareness, Glass said that CAPS will also be working with the DSG student services committee to increase mental health resources and make them more available to students. These efforts could involve everything from creating a Student Health Advisory Panel to making the location of CAPS more prominent.
Glass also expressed an interest in having DSG play a coordinating role for student groups currently working on mental health issues. CAPS currently partners with Peer for You, To Write Love on Her Arms and several other student organizations on campus. A partnership with DSG could allow for a more permanent and durable effort to focus on mental health, Glass said.
“Although several of these organizations have survived past the one semester lifespan they often have, DSG is always going to be here,” Glass said. “The longevity of DSG I think provides a more formal acknowledgement of these issues as a priority.”
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