Active Minds

Chapter Development and Support:Active Minds is dedicated to promoting the young adult voice in mental health. In 2021-2022, the organization supported chapters on more than 600 college and high school campuses in all 50 U.S. states plus Washington DC and Puerto Rico. These chapters trained 15,000 volunteers, who spent 80,000 volunteer hours directly reaching nearly 1 million young adults with vital information about suicide prevention, promoting mental health, symptoms of mental illness, and available resources for seeking help through unique Active Minds programming and training.

Send Silence Packing, suicide awareness program: Suicide is the second leading cause of death for young adults, and each one of those deaths touches us all. Send Silence Packing is an award-winning exhibit of more than a thousand donated backpacks representing the college student lives lost to suicide every year, complemented with a digital Behind the Backpacks experience. Active Minds has collected backpacks and personal stories in memory or in honor of loved ones impacted by suicide. By displaying backpacks with personal stories that put a face to lives lost to suicide, Send Silence Packing carries the message that preventing suicide is not just about lowering statistics, but also about saving the lives of students, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters and friends.

Active Minds Speakers: Research shows that the best way to break stigma around mental health is through personal contact. As a result, Active Minds has recruited and trained 18 professional speakers to tell their stories around mental health in an engaging, educational, and powerful manner. Members of Active Minds Speakers travel the country throughout the year, and/or provide virtual presentations, at high schools, colleges, and workplaces; to parents and administrators; and at conferences and national events. In 2021-2022, the Speakers Bureau held 207 speaking engagements both in person and virtually.

Active Minds in K-12 Schools: Active Minds has begun to bring chapter programming, trainings, and youth mobilization models to students and adult champions in high schools and middle schools. Hundreds of K-12 schools used Active Minds programing in 2021-2022.

Public Education and Awareness Campaigns: Active Minds has created Awareness Campaigns for our chapters, partners, and supporters such as V-A-R, Suicide Prevention Month, Stress Less Week, #HereForYou, and PostSecretU. During these programs, students and community members are introduced to mental health topics that are very relevant and often misunderstood, in an approachable way. By educating through innovative and relevant means including existing student networks (ie fraternities and sororities, honor societies, athletics), a comprehensive website at www.activeminds.org, digital means including Slack and outbound texting, and an interactive presence on social media, Active Minds aims to raise public consciousness and change the way mental health issues are understood and publicly approached. In 2021-2022, more than 1,500 campuses and communities ran Active Minds Public Education and Awareness Campaigns.

Your Voice is Your Power and Transform Your Campus Policy Change Campaigns: By mobilizing the next generation to use their voice and their experiences to change policy, we are making lasting change in the mental health landscape for years to come. Nearly 200 high schools, colleges, and universities engaged in the Transform Your Campus and Your Voice is Your Power advocacy campaigns in 2021-2022.