Be Mindful. “No mind suffering left unheard”: NMSU offers students new mental health help

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (KVIA) -- NMSU student Haleigh Haven is a member of the “No Mind Suffering Unheard” program, launched last fall.

“It was a lot of training,” she said.

“We did a lot of peer and mental first aid training, just learning how to pick up on behaviors, and how to recognize when we’re not doing see well mentally ourselves,” Haven added.

The program is a collaboration between the college of health, education, and social transformation’s department of public health sciences, and the Aggie Health and Wellness Center, among others. 

The program aims to train students to become mental health ambassadors as a way to build a support network across campus. 

Public health sciences professor Dr. Jagdish Khubchandani says the students go through one year of training to be able to recognize suicidal ideations, and essentially provide in his words, mental health first aid.  

“As far as I know, it’s one of the first in the state and few in the nation this year to make this approach of training other people of mental health,” said Khubchandani.

“Not everyone on campus can go to a psychiatrist whenever they want,” he added.

The program is a result of a one-year fifty thousand dollar grant from the New Mexico higher education department. While Khubchandani says it’s not a large amount, he got creative to utilize the funds. 

“How about I create a program that’s sustainable on its own, and we not put out something and then vanish in one year,” he said.

“We really couldn’t hire a counselor, or a psychiatrist for the small amount for one year, so we thought how about we train the students, who are often the first responders for their peers, family members, and make sure that they understand the problems with mental health issues.”

Another student participating believes more still needs to be done, but a program like this is a step in the right direction.

“Relying on mental health professionals alone, there will always be someone that you can’t reach,” said graduate student Lindsay Keeling. 

“When it comes to students, the peers that they’re around are the ones that see kind of day-to-day what someone’s baseline is like,” she added.

The university additionally launched “You” just over a year ago, a student portal that’s described as a one-stop shop for tips and tools for both mental and physical health. 

Dr. Khubchandani says that almost a fifth of college students nationwide are suffering from some form of mental health issues and adds that campuses need to adopt mental health promotion more widely.

An additional study from the National Alliance on Mental Illness from last year found that more than 64 percent of college students in the U.S. quit their studies because of mental disorders.