In observance of National Suicide Prevention Month, Alison Malmon, the founder and executive director of the non-profit organization Active Minds, came to ETSU to share how suicide has impacted her life.
Malmon’s debut lecture at ETSU took place at the Brown Hall Auditorium on Sept. 27 and was hosted by the Counseling Center. Katie Ward, a graduate assistant at the Counseling Center, helped organize the event.
Ward said that the Active Minds chapter at ETSU is relatively new, which is why the Counseling Center was eager to bring in Malmon as a guest speaker.
“Basically, we just want to really bring the conversation around suicide prevention to campus [because] it’s not talked about,” Ward said. “It’s not taboo. It’s not something that should be shunned.”
Malmon’s presentation began at 7 p.m. and lasted an hour. She started by telling the story of her brother, Brian, who took his own life when he was 22; at the time, Malmon was only 18.
Prior to his suicide, Brian had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, although he had been experiencing symptoms for three years without telling anyone.
Through the death of her brother, Malmon saw a need for mental health to be destigmatized, which led to her creating the first chapter of Active Minds at the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, during her junior year.
“I knew that from the very beginning we needed to create this dialogue around mental health at school, so that people like Brian knew that they had an opportunity to reach out for help,” Malmon said.
Even in 2001, Malmon saw generational differences in the way that mental health was addressed, which was the reason she started Active Minds on a college campus. Since younger generations were more open to approaching the subject of mental health; thus, they could be the generation to make a change.
After graduating from college with degrees in psychology and sociology, Malmon turned her student group into a non-profit organization.
Today, Active Minds is the nation’s premier mental health organization impacting young adults. With over 700 chapters in schools across the U.S., including ETSU’s chapter, Active Minds is constantly growing and spreading awareness.
“Mental health is not just about mental illness–it is about how we take care of ourselves every day,” Malmon said. “And while we may not all have mental illness, we all have mental health, and we need to be talking about it. We need to be taking care of it, every single day.”
Along with her story, Malmon also discussed the importance of language surrounding mental health topics, the need to end using mental illness as a label for ourselves and others and instead use the mindset of modeling change.
Malmon sees the future of mental health awareness as being in the hands of the younger generations; she describes the battle to achieve mental health awareness as “the final frontier.” In this way, Active Minds is providing the tools needed to continue the open conversation surrounding mental health.
The need for these tools is definitely urgent, as suicide is the second leading cause of death in college students, and 39% of college students will experience a significant mental health issue, according to Active Minds.
“Your generation is the one that’s changing this for America,” Malmon said.
Moving forward, Malmon advises everyone to take advantage of the mental health resources available to them, to check in with friends and family often and to keep the conversation about mental health going.
“Don’t wait for a crisis to say anything,” said Malmon. “Not every suicide can be prevented, but suicide is preventable.”
For more information on Active Minds visit www.activeminds.org or follow on Instagram: @active_minds
For more information about the counseling center and its resources visit www.etsu.edu/students/counseling or follow on Instagram: @etsucounselingcenter
