4th annual Mental Health Week starts to wrap up

The fourth annual Mental Health Week has been taking place this week, featuring the Dear World photography project, Me Too Monologues and workshops by Counseling and Psychological Services.

The Me Too Monologues are the newest edition to the Week’s programming. Started at Duke University in 2009, these monologues allow students to anonymously express their feelings about mental health in a performance.

The monologues will be performed at Theatre Intime on Friday and Saturday.

Mental Health Week Committee member Kei Yamaya ’17 took part in selecting the monologues and editing performances onstage.

“The monologues we got were very long, very personal," she said. "I felt honored and happy that people would submit that information about themselves."

Incorporating the arts was a conscious choice of the board, Mental Health Initiative Board member Rachel Bronheim ’15 said.

Mental Health Week is sponsored by the Mental Health Initiative Board.

“We’ve tried to incorporate not just educational programming, but arts and entertainment to keep people interested, and to keep the student body engaged,” Bronheim said. "Art is a particularly good way to raise awareness, but it can also be a project in and of itself. I think for the people who participated, it’s cathartic; but also for the community to see friends engaging in these kinds of issues and events goes a long way."

Issues that tend to be stigmatized like mental health often lead to students feeling detached from the conversation, she said.

While last year’s Mental Health Week focused more on working closely with the administration to reexamine the University’s policies regarding mental health, this year’s week focuses on engaging with the student body more fully, Bronheim said.

The board brought Robert Fogarty, professional photographer for the Dear World project, to the University on Monday. The campaign, called "Dear World: Live at Princeton," gave students the opportunity to write a message or story on their face, hand or arm and have their photos taken.

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Mental Health Week first began as a USG senate project in the fall of 2011 when the senate examined the lack of conversation and sense of stigma on campus surrounding mental health issues, former Mental Health Initiative Board chair and current board member Zhan Okuda-Lim ’15 said.

“I think that we’ve had a successful partnership and collaboration,” Director of Counseling and Psychology Services Calvin Chin said of the collaboration between the Mental Health Initiative board and CPS for Mental Health Week programming.

The CPS workshops were organized based on student feedback from past years,Okuda-Lim and Bronheim explained.

“It says a lot about the Princeton community that people have already been asking us how they can help,” Bronheim said. “We’re playing on feelings and thoughts that the community already has and trying to create something bigger out of it.”

Morgan Taylor ’15, however, said she didn't have time to make it to the events and said the week being so close to midterm week was problematic for her.

“I just generally know that things are happening, but I haven’t actually participated myself,” Taylor said. “I’m a senior and I’m working on my thesis, so I don’t have a lot of extra time to go to talks. I don’t know if it’s always been right before midterm week, but I feel like it wasn’t so close to it before.”

Jiyoon Kim ’17 said she wasn’t aware of the events that were being held for Mental Health Week.

Kim is a former contributing columnist for The Daily Princetonian.

“It’s the same problem as last year, just like having more publicity out there," Kim said. "While I’m aware that it’s Mental Health Week right now, I don’t really know the various components of what’s going on."

While this week marks one of the more publicized events run by the Mental Health Initiative Board during the year, members emphasized that conversations about mental health should continue after the week ends.

“Mental health is not something that only affects us for one week of the year,” Okuda-Lim said. “One of the things I look forward to seeing is USG senate, the board, but also just students in general having conversations, talking with their friends, talking with their peers, and knowing and showing that nobody is alone, that there’s always help available.”

One of the board’s goals is to reduce stigma towards mental health as a campus and encourage students to be more open about their experiences related to mental health, in order to create a more supportive community, Yamaya said.

The takeaway from this week is that students should feel comfortable asking for help, Chin said.

"You’re not alone," he said. "If you feel like you’re struggling, if you’re worried about being an impostor, it’s common for people to sometimes feel insecure, to feel out of place."

The week also includes screenings of the movie "Up" at the Garden Theatre.

Mental Health Initiative Board co-chairs Amalya Megerman ’16 and Naimah Hakim ’16 did not respond to requests for comment.