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As we wrap up Mental Health Awareness Month, Cocoa has some final stigma-busting suggestions for your consideration:
I love being your furry friend who is smiley, soft, and snuggly – I do. But I also have another very important pup purpose: to make a pawsitive impact on this campus! I want our campus to feel increasingly safe and supportive to hooman beans in ALL the struggles you face! Students and staff alike. So let’s wrap up this month with a few reminders about how to #stopthestigma
💖Be caring. Do not use therapy or medication as a way put someone down (ex. “she should be on meds!” or “that person needs some serious therapy”). Think about it, we would never talk about a physical health concern or disability in such a callous way - mental health should be no different *duh*
💖Be open. If you go to / have been to counseling, feel empowered to share your story! Going to counseling is sooo normal – it doesn’t mean you are weird, broken, or bad, it means you are courageous, curious, and cool.
💖 Be serious. Watch the joking, please. This means we don’t joke about suicide. Hoomans around you may have lost loved ones to suicide or may be struggling with those thoughts themselves, so it really isn’t all that funny.
💖Be humble. Listen more. You never really know what someone else is going through, so before offering a strong opinion, recognize that 1 experience is not all experiences & you may actually be in a better position to learn something than to speak something.
💖Be gentle with yourselves. Mental health struggle is NORMAL. Normal normal normal. At some point in everyone’s life, there’s struggle. It’s normal to need help, to ask for it, to make mistakes, to feel confused, hurt, or have any feeling really, to want or choose to take a medication, & so on. That's what we would say to our students, right? Time to say it to ourselves.
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