Another large part of growth for me within the Advising and Supporting competency area has been learning more about mental health and how it affects students in this environment.  I have been able to meet outcomes of developing and distributing accurate and helpful mental health information for students, faculty, and staff, as well as working to create “avenues for student involvement in mental health promotion and de-stigmatization of mental illness” (ACPA & NASPA, 2015, p. 37) in multiple capacities.  I have had the opportunity to develop two in-service training sessions in which the entirety of our residence life staff focused solely on mental health and self-care.  In the first training, we worked together as a group to define self-care and what activities they might do that meet their needs for well-being.  I then split our staff into groups of three and had them create three goals for weekly self-care to commit to for the rest of the semester.  Their group of three became their “self-care squad” and the group was to keep tabs on each other to ensure each person was meeting their goals, and if they were not able to that week, an automatic person or two to discuss stressors.  Lastly, I had them all take a photograph together for a banner I created for our main office, our most highly trafficked space, and had them all sign it as their commitment to their squad and their entire staff team.

The second training focused on crisis response with an emphasis on certain mental health concerns, specifically suicidal ideation amplified by anxiety and depression, both of which are rampant country-wide and our campus is no exception.  I began with some data and studies around the topic and then had our staff team split into two large groups.  Prior to the training, I worked with some of our veteran staff members to act out incidents that may end in a transport to our local hospital, but I asked them to perform with a bit of a twist: address the situation entirely wrong.  I then had the rest of the staff members identify what was wrong, what they would have done, why they would have changed something, and left time for questions and some discussion as to how the resident(s) in the incident could have reached that point.  I also had each staff member complete an incident report based on one of the scenarios to reinforce consistency in writing with first person throughout and eliminating bias.  I closed the training with reviewing resources available to our students, and also emphasized the responsibility and weight on their own mental health is more than enough reason to seek out these resources as well.