The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) hosted Pop the Stigma, its annual mental health awareness week from Oct. 8-12.
The week has two main aims: to dispel the stigma around mental health, and to connect Carleton students with mental health resources.
The event is especially important because one in five people in Canada experience mental health problems each year, and this includes students at university, according to Lily Akagbosu, CUSA vice-president (student issues).
“It’s probably even more in university, just because it’s a peculiar time in one’s life,” she said. “Students are often stressed out—students are often dealing with so many different things because mental health is not isolated in itself. There are certainly different things that contribute to our own wellbeing—there’s the emotional aspect, physical aspect, social aspect, environmental and intellectual aspect. When you consider all those components, university students are at higher risk to experience more adverse effects of mental health issues.”
Erin Wai, a first-year journalism and humanities student, said events such as Pop the Stigma give students struggling with mental health an accessible outlet that they may not have had otherwise.
“It’s important to bring awareness to decrease the stigma,” she said. “If people are more aware, they’re going to be more accommodating.”
Alexandre Fougere, a third-year political science student, said mental health awareness campaigns help people find the courage to reach out.
“Mustering the strength to [reach out for help] would be inconceivable were there not a collective of passionate and compassionate folks working assiduously to chip away at the pernicious myths which exacerbate mental health issues,” he said.
Akagbosu said this year is different because of the increased programming for students that were added into the week’s activities. The events include a daily resource fair, community discussions, a movie screening and discussion panel, and a mental health themed open mic.
“This is the largest-scale programming we’ve done—there’s so many more activities that students can participate in,” she said. She added that there are less workshop-style events in this year’s Pop the Stigma.
“We’ve learned that students tend not to participate that much in workshops-style events, and so this time we decided to look into fun events that can engage students—we have paint therapy, dance therapy. We had an open mic, some music, spoken word.”
Photo by Jasmine Foong
