#3 - The Story Behind Active Minds: Interview with Alison Malmon

Today on Matters of the Mind, I am in Washington D.C. attending the Active Minds Mental Health Conference, the nation’s leading conference focused on young adults and mental health. I sit down with Alison Malmon, Founder and Executive Director of Active Minds to discuss the mission and impact of her non-profit organization. After the loss of her brother to suicide, Alison channeled her grief into action and created Active Minds to open up conversations about mental health across the country. She shares the positive changes she’s seen in mental health awareness over the years 

To learn more about Active Minds, you can visit their website www.activeminds.org

Transcript

Pippa: Hello, everyone. My name is Pippa Greenberg, and you are listening to my podcast, Matters of the Mind. Today, I'm in Washington, D. C. attending the Active Minds Mental Health Conference, the nation's leading mental health conference for young adults. I'm currently sitting with Allison Malmon, founder and executive director of Active Minds. In this episode, we'll be discussing Allison's inspiration for creating Active Minds, as well as the importance of youth mental health advocacy. Now it's my greatest pleasure to introduce Allison Malmon. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Alison: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for including me. 

Pippa: What inspired you to create Active Minds and how did your experiences shape the mission of the organization?

Alison: Yeah, so my story is a long one, but when I think about kind of the crux of it, the basis of it is that I was a freshman in college when my older brother, Brian, died by suicide. And he had been a college student himself who started struggling with his mental health in his freshman year, but didn't tell anybody about it. Um, my mom is a licensed clinical social worker. We come from the most kind of white picket fence kind of environment you can imagine. And yet when Brian started struggling with his mental health, he thought he was alone. He thought it was his fault. He thought he was the only one on his campus who was struggling, uh, and everybody else was having the time of their life.

And so he hid it. his feelings and his friends. Also, actually, we learned later had seen changes in him, but they didn't know what to say to him and he wasn't saying anything. And so they wanted to respect his privacy because when this was happening, nobody was talking about mental health. And Brian eventually sought help from the counseling services at his college, took a leave of absence from his school, but ended up taking his life about a year and a half later. And it was my freshman year, much of my freshman year when he died. And I immediately started thinking about what had happened and the four years that he had been at school struggling with his mental health and why this happened.

And I realized that he and I were really similar people. And I, and had I started experiencing mental health struggles, I probably wouldn't have told anybody either. Because nobody was talking about this stuff. And so I went to my school's counseling services. I was in a grief and loss support group at the time.

And I went to the facilitators of the group and I said, like, I want to do something about the lack of conversation about mental health here at our school. And they said, it's an awesome idea. We don't really have anything to help you with. Why don't you see what else is out there that you can just bring to our campus?

And so I did. I wrote a letter to all of the national mental health organizations at the time that I could find to say this is my story. This is my brother's story. Do you have something that brings more attention to mental health going on? And I didn't get a response from anybody. And so that was my impetus to say, not only do I see a need here at my school, but it's actually probably not anywhere.

And so I launched what was a student group on my college campus in my junior year. I was at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And when I. graduated, I realized that this could become a job. And so I formed a nonprofit that basically the, the day after, the summer after I graduated from college, in order to develop and support other chapters of the student run mental health group that I had started at Penn.

And I wanted to create it on campuses across the country and, and more than anything, create a space and place where young adults could mobilize and talk about mental health. Because I saw very early on, after Brian died, how differently My friends and his friends had responded to his death first, how my parents and grandparents friends did, and none of it was vindictive, but my friends kind of sat in silence with me for, I remember, kind of minutes at a time when I was at home for the funeral, and one of them finally broke the silence and said, you know, Alison, we have no idea what you're going through. How can we help you? 

And at the same time, my parents and grandparents friends kind of shied away from the conversation and they didn't say anything. And so I saw that. My generation cared and wanted to know, but had just never been given the words. And so my goal in launching Active Minds, both as a student group and then as the national nonprofit, was to create a space where young adults could use their voices, could learn the words to use, and could make the change that we need around mental health and change the culture in the way that is so desperately needed.

And so that's what, you know, instigated the nonprofit. Um, and I saw, you know, You know, what was going on at Penn was going on at a lot of other schools. And I said, you know, there's, there's an opportunity to help students from across the country kind of do this better. 

Pippa: That's a fantastic mission. Thank you. So you mentioned briefly about how mental health wasn't really talked about, so how do you think the conversation around mental health has changed since you started Active Minds in 2003? 

Alison: Yeah. It's been I can't even explain. It's been monumental, the change. When Brian died in the year 2000, there was literally not a single conversation about depression, anxiety, let alone suicide or schizophrenia or any of those things.

And I remember, you know, when I started Active Minds, when I started the first chapter at Penn, our goal was to get people to say the word depression and, and to kind of recognize that anxiety was okay to acknowledge. I remember the first kind of news stories I saw that covered mental health back in 2004, 5, 6 were all very discriminatory and very stigmatizing.

You know, when there was a, the shooting in Virginia Tech, which, you know, was 2007, I believe. I remember a headline on, on the news source. that I was looking at that said, you know, Cho declared mentally ill in 2005, as though that was the answer to something. And, and in fact, like, you know, maybe this person was diagnosed with mental illness, but that doesn't depict necessarily that that person's going to be violent or not.

And, and so when there was conversation back then, it was very negative and it was very discriminatory and stereotypical and stigmatizing, which means that people like Brian and others. Aren't going to be willing to seek help or want to seek help because if you think that having a mental health issue is a bad thing, what is your motivation internally to say, Hey, like, I want to talk to somebody about what I'm going through.

What's happened since has been extraordinary. We have like, people are, are screaming from the rooftops. mental health stories right now in really important and hopeful ways. And it's not perfect. We still have a way to go with some way that the media are covering it and some way people are sharing their story.

But to have people openly talking about their experiences lets people like Brian know that they're not alone. That it's not their fault and that reaching out for help is just a part of life. And it is both a sign of strength and also just like if your tooth is hurting, you're going to go talk to your dentist about it.

If you're struggling with your mental health, it's not your fault. And it is the everyday conversation that has been so instrumental in the lives of so many people. And then we see, the Simone Biles of the world and you name the celebrity and they're talking, you know, Selena Gomez, they're talking about their mental health in a way that really helps to influence folks who are looking up to these people and saying, wow, if they've been through this and they have all of this, like, it's okay for me to go through this too.

So, as I said, we still have some work to do, right? There's still, but I, I'm really inspired by, you know, the young adults who have really been pushing this conversation forward. And we like to say that, you know, the, the Active Minds generation is talking about mental health differently than our parents and grandparents.

And we're really proud that we were the leaders of that. And you see folks who are of the generation where they're not afraid to talk about mental health anymore and they're not afraid to ask for more and to say, we need this or I need that. And that's the way that this conversation is going to continue to change.

Pippa: Just hearing from what you're saying about how much mental health discussions have changed from when you started Active Minds and up until now, it must feel so rewarding to hear everyone's journeys and that they're now free to speak about it. It's really amazing work that you've been doing. 

Alison: Well, thank you. It's, it's really cool. Like I can't, I can't describe it to anybody, right? It's, it's only, only really my family who has been on this journey with me from, from the, the beginning. But it is remarkable to see the change. You know, COVID for all that it did for so many folks and all of the pain, it really unearthed the mental health conversation in a way that I didn't know what was going to be the impetus.

I didn't know what was going to help change things. And I continue to think that is this generation that's pushed it, but COVID really opened the world's eyes to, oh, mental health is important and mental illness isn't somebody's fault. And Hey, I was feeling fine, and now I'm feeling like really isolated.

I didn't do anything, so it, like, other people must feel this way. So it's been a fascinating way to see how the world has opened their eyes, and it feels really cool. I continue to meet young adults who connected with active minds when they were in high school or college, and now they are in their early 30s, or they're raising kids, and they're just doing, like, life differently than folks did in previous generations.

And I, so I have a lot of that they're going to teach, and they're going to parent, and they're going to practice medicine in a different way than the rest of us have grown up and it's, it's really going to change the society. And so, you know, while I wish that Brian had been alive in a different time, it is just extraordinary to see and to think that people, other people are able to kind of get through those really, really tough times, even when They're feeling what he felt, but getting the help that they need before it's too late.

Pippa: That's really great. So if someone were interested in advocating, how would they be able to join an Active Minds chapter or start a chapter of their own at their own school? 

Alison: Oh, I love that question. So we have a number of ways that people can bring Active Minds to their school and community. Chapters are what we're most well known for, but we have a number of programs too.

So a chapter of Active Minds is a student group that is very similar to that student group that I started at Penn. a million years ago. Um, and it is, you know, getting students together with an on campus advisor to plan mental health events and trainings for the campus. So you can find information about our chapters where we currently have chapters or how to start a new one on our website, which is just activeminds.org. And our whole list of 500 plus chapters is on our website, but we also have a number of ways that you can engage with our programs even if you don't have a chapter. So we have found that for some schools, chapters just. don't make sense, or they're not the right way in. And so we have, you can get involved in our Mental Health Advocacy Academy or our Mental Health Advocacy Institute, which are the way for high school students or college students to get involved in policy change work.

You can bring one of our speakers to your school or our Send Silence Packing Suicide Prevention Exhibit. We also have a program called ASK, A S K, which is Acknowledge, Support, Keep in Touch, which is a training, that you can take a digital, an interactive digital experience to learn how to talk to people, like we call it everyday conversations for everyday struggles, kind of the stop, drop, and roll in mental health.

So that's another way that you can engage with active minds, all on our website, but the, the best way, you know, what we are most well known for is our chapter network and student groups in high schools and in colleges. Bringing broader attention to mental health at their school and all of that information is on ActiveMinds.org. 

Pippa: That's fantastic. It's amazing to hear that there are so many resources that people can go to when they need help or if they want to help others. It's really great and ultimately this will just lead to better communities. and conversations around mental health. 

Alison: Thank you. Thank you. It's, it's, we, we're going to continue to evolve and we're going to continue, we're, we're always kind of keeping an eye on what programs our youth and young adults are asking for and how we can evolve what we're doing.

And, and there's a lot of power in that chapter model because the chapter stays at a school and sometimes it's more than other people need. So it's like, how do we help young adults do what young adults do best? And that's kind of the way that we approach our work and just really appreciate that. 

Pippa: That's fantastic.

Thank you so much. And thank you so much for letting me interview you. Thank you so much for joining us today. 

Alison: That's awesome. Thank you so much for including me in this.