Searching for Support Students Find Community Around Post-Pandemic Mental Health

RACHEL BECKER Editor-in-Chief

A national survey by the American College Health Association reported that almost three quarters of students reported moderate or severe psychological distress. With almost three years of the pandemic under our belts, and a barrage of bad news on social media feeds everyday, no wonder mental health in college students has fallen.

Traditional resources for mental health, like counseling, were sparse during the pandemic and for some students, online counseling was not enough. At the University of Central Missouri, students have started to look to their own student organizations to aid in their mental health journeys.

Liz Riggs, UCM senior and the President of UCM’s National Alliance for Mental Illness, said their group is part of a national grassroots organization that is dedicated to providing resources and outreach all around the country.

The local chapter is here to serve the UCM community including those from the Lee’s Summit campus, holding meetings over Zoom bi-weekly.

Riggs said the group also shares local resources on Discord, Instagram and Twitter, including updates on UCM’s counseling center.

Riggs said that mental health has been a struggle in the past and the pandemic did set them back, but joining NAMI was able to aid in their recovery. They said that having people to go to about mental health issues was what they needed.

Rebekah Syers, a fifth-year senior psychology major, acts as NAMI’s vice president and certified support group facilitator.

Syers said NAMI is meant to help students find mental health resources through outreach.

“We are here to give you answers for the questions where you’re not sure on where to turn to,” Syers said.

“We work in ending the stigma around mental health, especially in college people,” Syers said. “People just don’t notice the burden they take on when you don’t focus on yourself. I have so many issues myself that I ignored, and the support group helped me.”

Syers said that mental health has become easier to talk about in recent years, but the discussions about it are not always positive or in comfortable environments.

NAMI was able to support Syers during her time at UCM, she said.

Syers transferred to UCM during her sophomore year. She said, in her first year she struggled to make connections and secluded herself. Syers said she was depressed when she first came to UCM, and the isolation made it worse.

“Ignoring it is the worst thing you can do, and I did that. I did it for so long,” Syers said. “I pretended I was fine when I wasn’t and I wanted to be perfect, I wanted to be the perfect student. And then I just fell down a hole.”

She then joined NAMI, at first just coming to meetings casually. After needing to medically withdraw from university, and bearing the transition back, Syers said she went to NAMI for support.

“I needed that support and NAMI was there for me during it,” Syers said. “I really connected with the people there. When I talked to people there, they got it. And I realized I’m not really alone.”

“While it was a slow climb, trying to take care of myself, I am now at a place I want to be,” Syers said.

However, NAMI is not always about mental health, Syers said. She said that sometimes just having a community around someone is all the support they need.

NAMI hosted a JackBox game night earlier in the semester, and Syers said while mental health was not the theme of the night there was a sense of community around it.

“You don’t need to talk about your mental health all day everyday. You just need people there that get it. That’s all it really is,” Syers said.

Riggs also serves as the secretary for Prism, an LGBTQ+ group on campus. They joined Prism their freshman year, the fall of 2019, so when students were sent remote the following semester, due to the COVID-19 pandemic Riggs still had a community of Prism members to connect with from home.

“It helped me feel a little less isolated when we were in the pandemic and that was really nice,” Riggs said. “Then coming back to campus it was a little weird, but it was weird for everybody, but we got back into the swing of things pretty quickly though.”

Prism has worked with the Multiculturalism Center for Unity week, and Riggs said they are planning for events in April.

Lillian Schutte, Prism President, said “Our main purpose is to give LGBT folks on campus a place where they can be themselves unapologetically no matter their sexuality, gender, or anything else. It is a lot easier to deal with the stuff that comes with being LGBT when you have that support network,” Schutte said.

She said mental health is a really big problem in the LGBTQ+ community, often due to discrimination and lack of family support.

“It is heartbreaking how many times I’ve heard the same narrative over and over again of, ‘I need help right now because I came out to my family and they do not support me at all,’” Schutte said.

She said that the members of Prism try to look out for each other, and over time become a new family for one another.

Schutte said the pandemic hit Prism hard, affecting their enrollment and planned in-person events.

“So we do have a big age gap right now of sophomores and juniors that are not represented in our club because of the pandemic,” Schutte said.

Riggs said that after the pandemic Prism has remained relatively unchanged, minus the missed opportunities for meetings and recruitment during lockdown.

“I would say we’re actually probably closer as a group now than we were before the pandemic,” Riggs said. “We were pretty close before the pandemic but I think in the past year or two we’ve all grown to be really close with each other.”

“We’re here for anybody,” Riggs said. “You don’t need to be queer to join Prism and you don’t need to have a mental illness to join NAMI. We’re here for everybody, we’re here for the allies, we’re here for the people who identify those ways.”