Mental Health Week Kicks Off

The College launched on Saturday a series of events coordinated by the Undergraduate Council and aimed at sparking discussion of mental health-related issues among students, administrators, and UHS.

Last year, the UC named April “Mental Health Awareness Month,” tying a series of similar events into its push for academic calendar reform.

This year’s organizers “concentrated” the events into one week and are emphasizing the importance of open discussion of mental health issues, said Tamar Holoshitz ’10, a UC representative and one of the primary organizers of the week’s events.

“Despite a general awareness about mental health, resources available are not being used well, or there’s certain myths about them, or students are unsatisfied with services,” said Gabriela B. Tantillo ’08-’09, co-chair of Mental Health Awareness and Advocacy Group (MHAAG), a co-sponsor of the program—officially known as “Speak Out: Mental Health at Harvard.”

The effort was announced in a joint e-mail to the community from acting Dean of the College David R. Pilbeam and UC President Matthew L. Sundquist ’09 on Friday.

Pilbeam said that in his interactions with students and colleagues as Dean, he has witnessed the use of mental health services on campus.

“I can certainly attest from my own experience these past few months about the strength and commitment of our mental health services,” Pilbeam said in an e-mailed statement. “Of course, we can always do better, but we’re doing extremely well and are making changes all the time to improve our services to the students.”

According to Holoshitz, one of the goals of this week is to draw focus to a UC initiative to improve patient feedback at UHS. She added that if it goes through, the legislation could serve as “a good start for working collaboratively with” administrators more broadly.

Last year’s mental health month focused more on student-to-student interaction, whereas this week will focus more on student-to-administration interaction, said Emily R. Kaplan ’08-’09, co-chair of MHAAG.

Kaplan emphasized that this focus is not because of any new concerns about mental health on campus.

Five events have been scheduled for the week, which will conclude this coming Friday. A rock concert on Saturday benefited the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law.

On Friday, students will have the opportunity to complete a survey outside the Science Center about their experiences with UHS and campus mental health services.

Several other student groups—including Community Health Initiative, Drug and Alcohol Peer Advisors, and student mental health liaisons—have collaborated with the UC and MHAAG to organize the week’s events.

“As you can tell, this has been a huge effort by some incredibly committed students,” Pilbeam said. “I think we all can sense a growing receptivity amongst students to the notion that our community wants to be a more caring community.”

—Staff writer Aditi Balakrishna can be reached at balakris@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Rachel A. Stark can be reached at rstark@fas.harvard.edu.