Byattending this presentation, youare already having a positive impact on stigma.

By educating and informing

yourselves on the facts about mental health, you are taking thefirst step to helping eliminate stigma.

Early warning signs

Examples of positive messages for the post-it and chalking projectsinclude:

o Mental health matters. Protect yours.
o No health without mental health.
o You are not alone.

TOWARDS A COMPREHENSIVE MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY:

Critical population :On the other hand, when university/college students develop mental illness, they are often earlier
in the course of the illness and, as a result, tend to be easier to treat. This means fewer students would develop severe
substance abuse or chronic untreated medical illness and have less personal, social, and economic costs. As well, people
go to college/ university with the purpose of learning. That fact coupled with the relatively young age group most
students fall into, often creates an attitude of openness to new ideas.
Education and health are interdependent and reciprocal. Therefore, the efforts to promote both in collaboration are
synergistic and mutually beneficial.
FRAGMENTED SERVICES
Although a number of mental health services are located on each campus, the degree of coordination and collaboration
between these services varies greatly due to a number of potential barriers that exist. Professional barriers are the most
invisible and potentially the most significant obstruction to providing seamless care. They stem from differences in
training, professional language, theories, expectations, status, power, and compensation.
Campus MHAP
Many colleges are going beyond simply providing treatment services by expanding efforts to prevent mental health
problems from arising and promote the mental health of all students. In other words, they are adopting a public health
approach to address the social and environmental risk factors that influence student mental health.

Those charged with developing a mental health action plan should look to implement programs along a continuum
(Institute of Medicine, 1994; National Research Council, 2009), including efforts to:

Strengthen students existing resources to respond to stress and that support their overall health and well-being.
(enhance and promote health of all)

Reduce risk factors and build protective factors for all students. (primary prevention)

Identify early symptoms in individuals and intervene to prevent exacerbation of problems and their potential
consequences, such as serious mental illness, academic and relationship problems, or suicidal behavior. (early
recognition and intervention)

Treat those who are experiencing mental health problems and identify those at risk for suicide. (treatment)

When continued care is indicated, intervene to reduce relapse and recurrence, and provide after-care. (maintenance)

Develop protocols and strategies to implement after a crisis or traumatic event, with the aim of alleviating the possible
negative effects of the event on the campus community. (postvention)
BUILDING MOMENTUM AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Engage key stakeholders in a mental health and suicide prevention task force
A comprehensive approach, involving multiple strategies operating at both the environmental and individual levels, has
to be the responsibility of more than one person or department. A mental health task force is a type of coalition of
diverse members who agree to work together to achieve changes that the members could not bring about separately.

Potential task force members may include:

Academic affairs
Alcohol and other drug prevention office
Career services
Community mental health providers
Counseling center
Disability services
Health services
International student services
Judicial affairs
Student leaders
Wardens

The first step: Collecting new data, such as online or written surveys, focus groups, and one-to-one interviews (with
faculty, staff and students), can be used to supplement existing data and yield a deeper understanding of student mental
health needs on campus.
Look up survey/researches done in delhi/india assessing the mental health of the youth, specially interview based
surveys if any, and its finding to do a need based analysis.

A campus may have several programs aimed at getting more students to ask for help, and at the same time, data may
reveal that certain groups of students at higher risk are less likely to do so.

Planners must make difficult decisions about which problems to focus on first. Data on risk and protective factors and
populations at highest potential risk can support priority setting.
A comprehensive mental health promotion and suicide prevention program addresses multiple levels of influence:
intrapersonal (individual); interpersonal (group, peer, family); institutional; community; and public policy (DeJong and
Langford, 2002; Langford, 2006). Known as a social ecological framework, this approach asserts that health- and
safety- related behaviors are shaped not only by the individual but also by that individuals environment.
Step 2: Identify priority problems and set long range goals: A goal statement articulates specific, measurable goals
whose achievement can be readily observed and measured.
Key questions to ask in setting goals include:
What will change?
For whom?
By how much?
When will the change occur?
How will it be measured?

In both the general and college student population, research has consistently shown that loneliness and isolation are risk
factors for suicide, suicidal behavior, and mental health problems, while supportive social relationships serve as a
protective factor against these outcomes (SPRC, 2004; National Research Council & Institute of Medicine, 2009;
Hefner & Eisenberg, 2009). The experience of strong social support reduces student isolation, promotes feelings of
belonging, and encourages the development of small, connected groups within the larger campus community. Can that
be facilitated by having group therapy?

Help students develop life skills: Relationship difficulties and financial problems are risk factors for both depression
and suicidal behavior (Drum et al, 2009; Eisenberg et al, 2007a). However, one survey found that 40 percent of seniors
say that their college or university places very little emphasis on helping them cope with non-academic life.

Administrators might also consider how day-to-day experience itself offers students opportunities to develop their
ability to cope with and respond to an array of challenges. Whether involved in a class project, playing team sports,
working through issues with a new roommate, or figuring out summer work plans, students frequently encounter
situations where they can learn adaptive ways to negotiate conflict, solve problems, or handle financial responsibilities.

Life skill training-wherein we encourage students to give suggestions to each other for their day to day life
problems like difficulty in adjusting with a new roommate, difficulty in public speaking. We can have role plays,
the topic of the discourse can be decided at the end of each such a group session by consensus. Everyone should
be given a turn to speak. To attract the students we can make posters lets help each other understand ourselves
better.
The benefits:
You get to be a part of a strong social network who are like minded.
You feel understood and realize you are not alone.
You feel more connected within the campus
The interaction is quite dynamic and interactive, wherein everyone participates
Acquisition of new skills through trial and errors

Providing students early assistance with life problems may prevent them from experiencing depression or
anxiety at a level that would require treatment. Thus it is a primary preventive approach.

Other than taking up everyday issues for discussion, we can also have a film screening and discussion every
month, wherein we show a film related to mental health and then post that encourage the group members to
engage in a discussion about the same. This could be very effective in attracting more people and encouraging
them to think deeper about issues which are relevant to all of us, but we keep mum about it. In addition this
would help in creating awareness and demystifying mental health. The group members can further share their
experiences with others, who might also like to give it a try. Such a medium can also be used in conjunction with
a presentation on mental health.

Enhancing overall health: Similarly such a group discussion set up can also be used to advocate positive thinking,
by acknowledging the resources that we already have in our lives, and how to use the same to achieve well being
and attain ones fullest potential.

In addition, at the initial level, the topics that we chose for the group session can be based upon an informal
survey that we do within the campus, to get an idea as to which issues are most relevant to the youth today.

For some students, a minimal intervention will be enough, while others will need to step up to increasingly more
intensive levels of care. For example, a mailed intervention providing students with personalized feedback and
information about their depression symptoms was inexpensive to implement yet reduced depressive symptoms and
feelings of hopelessness.

Foreign students targeted in hostels.

What about blind students? The posters are useless to them.

We can hold art exhibitions wherein, the students are given the theme of mental health and encouraged to draw their
interpretation of the same. Their work can then adorn the campus in form of posters and pamphlets with a caption like
mental health matters. This would again be an endeavour wherein, the students are appointed in highlighting mental
health.
Summary
Surveys within the campus to understand what are the primary issues the students are grappling with? ( eg for
which of these are you likely to consult a counselor-when you are feeling low, anxious, angry)
Modalities used for creating awareness about our work: Internet forum, appointing the students themselves as
the stakeholders of mental health, via the formation of mental health societies in colleges.

Other than this we would also appoint some other consumable modalities like-nukkar nataks, posters,
presentations. The impact of these modalities is short lived and need to be appointed more frequently like every
month.
Having mental health societies in college
Demographics targeted: administrative staff, foreign students, pwd students
Gatekeepers-identifying those showing early warning signs of distress. Who is targeted? Hostel wardens,
students ( peers, friends)
Life skill training to offer early prevention and to encourage overall positive well-being