With spring just around the corner, campus is beginning to bloom and bring hope along with the sunshine. Marquette organizations including Marquette University Student Government, Peer Educators, Active Minds and the You Are Not Alone Campaign are putting on events for Mental Health Awareness week, which began April 7 and runs through April 13. It is a week focused on shedding light on the stigma of mental health and to raise awareness within Marquette’s student body and those associated with the campus.
One of the main events this week is a documentary called “Angst” being shown at the Varsity Theatre at 8 p.m on Thursday, April 11th.
“It’s essentially a documentary centered around anxiety and kind of revealing issues that people could be facing themselves…it’s showing people they aren’t alone in it,” Yesenia Ortega, a senior in the College of Communication said.
Ortega said there is a wide range of well-known people in the video, like Michael Phelps.
This year’s Metal Health Awareness Week is coming back after last year’s You Are Not Alone Campaign, which Ortega said was centered on breaking the stigma of mental health on campus and showing that people are not alone in the struggles they are facing. It was about making mental health conversational, Ortega said.
The documentary itself was an idea brought to MUSG’s attention by Meredith Nee, a sophomore in the College of Communication.
“I actually heard through a friend that they were showing this film at my old high school and I was planning mental health awareness week and I thought it would be a good idea,” Nee said.
Nee watched a couple clips from the film and thought it would be great to bring to Marquette’s campus to show for Mental Health Awareness week as a Thursday night event.
Nee thinks that the prevalence of the documentary is extremely important because it is specifically focused around children and students. She thinks the documentary wants to be a resource to de-stigmatize anxiety and show that everyone is in this together.
Sofia Driscoll, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences as well as the Vice President of Active Minds, knows that bringing the documentary to campus could make an impact.
“I think it’s important because it’s going to facilitate important conversation about keeping our mental health up as college students and it’s important to acknowledge it and make sure it’s important for people to own it,” Driscoll said.
Driscoll said she hopes that the documentary makes people feel more comfortable talking about mental health and helps people who are hesitant to seek help to talk about it and seek a path to recover.
Along with the documentary, the week will also include other events for Mental Health Awareness Week as well as the You Are Not Alone Campaign.
“We have monologue night…students are submitting their stories and reading off stories of their own mental health struggles,” Ortega said.
Along with monologue night, there is a wellness hour on Wednesday and a self-care night on Saturday.
