City College students attended Active Minds‘ mental health awareness event featuring speaker Abraham Sculley.
Topics of discussion included mental health hardships, growing from past struggles and when to seek help.
Sculley, who suffers from depression, anxiety and isolation, shared stories from his past and recovery during the presentation. He emphasized the importance of normalizing conversations about mental health.
“What I feel is a sense of responsibility,” Sculley said. “I also feel fulfillment and weight and joy.”
Mental health advocate Abraham Sculley speaks at the Active Minds event on May 6 at the BC Forum on City College’s West Campus in Santa Barbara Calif. The event was held in celebration of Mental Health Awareness Month. (Hilary Litton)
During the event, Sculley opened the floor to the students in attendance to speak. Several people from the audience shared their stories during the presentation, fostering an environment that, as Sculley described, allowed for more meaningful conversation.
“There was one guy who shared that he tried seeking support and got nowhere,” Sculley said. “That’s a very difficult thing for anyone to say in front of people they don’t know. I think it helped us recognize this was a safe space.”
Mental health problems on college campuses are becoming increasingly common. Alyson Bostwick, a mental health counselor at City College, said the school is continuing to improve counseling services because students’ emotional well-being affects their success in school.
“Mental health directly impacts college performance,” Bostwick said. “By destigmatizing mental health, it can bring people who really need help in.”
Bostwick explained that while there are many resources for students with mental health issues, those who need help the most are often the people who seem like they need it the least.
She added that it’s important to change negative perceptions of counseling and other resources.
“By bringing someone like this lovely man in to be vulnerable and share his own experience, it takes away a lot of the fear of asking for help,” Bostwick said.
Sculley said that depression and other mental health illnesses are not weaknesses. He compared an episode of depression to a broken ankle and said that people treat physical wounds differently from mental illnesses.
“If I broke my ankle, nobody would judge me for going to the emergency room,” Sculley said. “But because society separates mental, physical and spiritual well-being, we don’t always treat mental health conditions the same way.”
Later on, Sculley encouraged students to vocalize their thoughts if they struggled to open up to others. He said students can heal by writing in journals, taking voice notes, drawing or speaking to people they trust.
“I think sometimes we stay in our heads and that doesn’t get us anywhere,” Sculley said.
A large focus of the presentation was feeling hopeful about the future.
Sculley ended the meeting with a message he wanted all students to know. “Your story is not over yet. Keep going.”
He said that although tough times may feel permanent while they’re happening, there will be clearer moments down the road.
“There are things I went through five years ago where I thought I couldn’t even see life beyond it,” Sculley said. “Now I laugh at some of those moments. That’s life.”
The event concluded with students discussing their thoughts on mental health. Conversations continued long after Sculley’s presentation ended and students left knowing that they are not alone in their struggles.
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