Itzel Morales-Salgado

Semson Nip
Jeff Morris
Angella Salhuana
Steven Placencia
Mental Health Project
Why I chose this particular problem and sent it out as a proposal to my class was
because I have several family members who have suffered with disorders throughout their
lives and paid gravely for it. If the mental disorders were found earlier, then perhaps the
disorders wouldnt have grown as bad as they did. Therefore, inspired by my own family
history, I thought that it would be important to increase the awareness of mental health and
allow for people to know that they have access to services if they needed them.
Other reasons for my team members to be joining in my group project is that they
were intrigued by the idea that we could come up with a solution for mental health
awareness. Angella was especially interested in this group project because she already had a
background working within the mental health group. There was also interest within this
project because they were also just good samaritans and wanted to help increase student
awareness for mental health.
Approximately 5% of the entire student body of Santa Rosa Junior College on both
the Santa Rosa and the Petaluma Campus know that there is a mental health clinic. Then
about 1% of them know where the mental health clinic is located on either campus. These
shocking statistics were told to us by Chad, a coordinator within the mental health clinic.
Thus we can conclude that some students know about the Health Services that the Campus

provides, but do not take advantage of it. They are more focused on their classes, and social
life, without thinking about their health.
Mental health is overall very important to ones life. If it starts to deteriorate, it causes
multiple problems in either their personal, professional, sexual, economic, cultural life. It
leads into things that does not allow for a person to be able to function correctly within
society.
College is a stressful and vulnerable time for most young adults (ages 18-25). These
individuals encounter many developmental changes and challenges, such as separating from
parents, forming personal relationships, living independently, and discovering their
self-identity. Seventy-five percent of mental illnesses are diagnosed by the age of 24 and
depression is one of the most common of all mental illnesses. During this pivotal transition
into adulthood, depression can be a major barrier to academic success. (American College
Students Views of Depression and Utilization of On-Campus Counseling Services.)
But when looking specifically at an audience of college students, we can see that
mental health is essential for students success in academia as well as socially. Although,
college life is constantly filled with stress, learning to manage it and run through life is
essential for every college student to learn. Yet for those who are unable to manage the stress,
the Junior College has provided services that give people the opportunity to learn coping
skills, evaluate their mental health, and be screened for mental disorders.
The causes of this problem is because there is a lack of awareness within the college
community. This could be due to many reasons such as lack of time, lack of visibility due to
lack of resources such as people. In hindsight, we should have asked questions on why people
didnt know about the mental health services. However we can only infer with personal
experiences along with research.

A big reason that we discovered amongst ourselves is that people are discouraged to
go in and actually meet with a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist because they are scared
that they might actually find something wrong with them. They are afraid that they will then
be attacked for being different or for their disorder. So with those thoughts, we can see that
mental illness has its own stigma in which we had to battle when presenting ourselves to the
college community.
Another cause would be the lack of time that college students have. Some may be full
time students, or part-time, which means that they also work to support themselves, or they
may even be attending college on a full-time student schedule while also working to support
themselves. People have social lives - personal lives which also weave into their time usage
so that allows for people to be even busier and have less time to focus on their own mental
health. Whatever, the reason may be, the end result is the same in that college students have
less time to take care of themselves mentally.
Instead, people are more prone to be abusive towards their mental health, taking it for
granted, as such that leads them into not being aware of the services that the college is
providing for them. This ultimately causes a snowball effect where the students are not aware
of the services, thus they do not schedule themselves for an appointment and this leads to the
mental health services to be not used as frequently as it should be. Students then go along
with their work saying that they are fine and that they already know how to manage their
stress but they simply do not have the time.
Also when students are told about the mental health center and its services during
class time, there is more of a chance that the students would actually zone out and not pay
attention to what the speakers have to say. This would then create for a space for the student
to rest mentally when they are supposed to be learning about the services provided for them.

Because of this disconnection between adults and college students, it allows for the mental
health services to be not in anyone mind.
There is also the fact that many college students do not have the financial support for
them to be able to support their mental health. Therefore, they do not go to the services
because they believe that it will ultimately just be a way for the college to gain extra money
rather than seriously treating their mental health. However, those students are misjudged in
the fact that the mental health services are free amongst the junior college students.
Ultimately there are several reasons why college students are not aware of the
resources that the Junior College provides. Therefore, it was our goal to help the students
become aware of the junior colleges mental health services in a time efficient manner while
still being able to be interactive amongst the students. So we had several solutions that we
came up with that completed our criterion. We came up with a workshop idea, doing 5
minute speeches during class time, a game booth, flyer passing, and fundraising.
We originally did not choose to implement this particular solution. Instead we were
planning to do a game booth and using rubber animals as well as balloon animals as prizes
for winning the games that we set up. However, when it was getting closer to the date, we
were unable to obtain an important piece needed to adapt our booth. Instead we decided to
focus on just the balloon animals and use them as an object to hand out instead of flyers and
to grab peoples attention.
Our end goal for the balloons for a cause was to be able to have each classroom have
one balloon animal inside during class. We wanted the balloon animals to be able to be an
object of conversation and if people wanted balloon animals, they would have to come talk to
us and get interactive. Overall, the balloon animals were just a starter for conversation
amongst students which would fulfill all of our criteria. We managed to get students

attention in a time efficient manner, we told them that all the services are free, we were
students connecting with other students in an interactive manner.
In which I believe was more effective than what the Mental Health clinic was already
doing previously. Unfortunately, due to their lack of resources of people, they were unable to
do as much promotion of themselves within the student community. Instead, there would be
some tables that they would set up and they would have their psychologist there to answer
any questions as well as their representatives in the clinic there. It wasnt very interactive
based and it had more students avoiding the booth rather than actually listening to what they
had to say. This was definitely shown when they said that on a good day , they were able to
interact with 45 students during the time period of several hours. While we beat 45 students
within the first hour so we ended up showing that our method was overall better.
The team members in the group are sad that they are leaving the project done after
two sessions. They felt that we could and should have done more sessions with the balloon
animals because we were consistently getting a large amount of people to know and talk
about the mental health clinic.

Cited Works (Titles and Links)

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