May is Mental Health Awareness Month
For the sixth year, the Brovald-Sim Community Journalism Practicum has focused on an underserved campus community. Previous semesters looked at the disability, recovery, rural student, and black student communities. The Spring 2022 semester class focused on the more than 50 percent of students at the UMTC campus who reported having a mental health diagnosis in a 2021 Boynton Health Survey. The course website, called AccessU: More than Stress, is about confronting stigma and uncovering the experiences and needs of students with mental health diagnoses at the University of Minnesota. The class did great work, writing profiles, news pieces and issue stories stemming from its survey of undergraduates. Stories explore mental health stigma in faculty interactions, the realities of students with schizophrenia and the relative lack of peer support groups for mental health on campus even as other campuses have built robust peer support programs.
To hear more from the students and read their reporting, visit AccessU: More Than Stress.
