As part of National Public Health Week, Jocelyn Resnick, an MPH student specializing in physical activity and a student ambassador for the Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, organized a panel discussion focused on mental illness, how to end stigmas and how take part in advocacy.
Thirty students gathered on April 4 for the panel entitled, “Addressing Mental Health: Policy to Promotion,” which was co-organized by Milken Institute SPH students Farzana Karim and Shawn Orenstein. Panelists included Dr. Eliot Sorel, Dr. Olga Acosta Price, Dr. Monique Turner and Sarah Harte. They disussed how one in 25 American adults deal with a serious mental illness in a given year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The organization, like so many others, works to promote the same respect, attention and dignity paid to mental health issues as those issues related to physical health.
While GW faculty are working to incorporate more mental health awareness into their curriculia, students need to act as well. Initiatives by young people are going to be what changes the rhetoric in this country and thus affect policy change, panelists said. This event was one way to help make mental health, like physical health, a priority.