From
Pain to Activism: One Gutsy UPENN Woman’s Fight to End the Stigma about Mental
Illnesses on College Campuses
Alexis Maislen
In the midst of her freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania—while she was adapting to the rigors of academia and the pressures of college social life, Alison Malmon’s older brother Brian committed suicide.
Her
brother, an undergraduate at Columbia University, had developed symptoms of
schizoaffective disorder—a mental illness that features disruptive mood swings
and paranoid and confused thoughts in his freshman year. He didn’t seek
treatment for the symptoms until two years later—two years too late. At school,
he was president of his a cappella group Uptown Vocal and the sports editor of
Columbia’s newspaper. His friends only noticed that he would occasionally go
into a funk but quickly snap out of it.
His therapist recommended he take a year off before returning to
Columbia. But by then, it was too late. Brian, in an incredible amount of pain,
ended his life.
Reflection
Turns to Education
At
22, Malmon, now a Penn alumnus and head of the parent
organization of Open Minds, an organization she began on Penn’s campus in 2001
to raise awareness about mental health disorders in college students, openly
shares her story to encourage others to seek treatment before it is too late. Malmon, recently elected to the board of the Alliance for
the Mentally Ill--Montgomery County chapter, has spent the past three years
educating college students about mental illnesses. She believes that the only
way to combat the stigma toward the mentally ill is to talk openly about one’s
experiences.
“I
spent a year after Brian’s death reflecting about his situation, what I could
have done differently to help. I thought about what I would have done if I had
been in the same situation at Penn. I called around to many different national
mental health organizations to see if they had programs to raise awareness
among college students and there was nothing,” said Malmon.
According
to statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health, suicide is the
second leading cause of death among college students and 27 percent of young
adults between ages 18 to 24 have some form of a diagnosable mental illness.
The age of onset for bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia often is
between ages 17 to the mid-twenties.
“College
is supposed to be the best years of our lives,” Malmon
said. “I want people to realize they are not alone in what they are going
through and to seek treatment early so they can enjoy the rest of their college
years.”
Feeling
Alone and Isolated
Malmon joined a grief and loss group on campus to deal with her brother’s
death. While this helped some, she found she was the only person there who had
experienced a sibling death as well as the only suicide survivor.
“It’s
been a long rough road. Brian was my only sibling and my parents are divorced.
So, now I have to get used to being an only child. We are lucky because we were
aware of his suffering and it didn’t come completely out of the blue. I’ve had
to grow up and to re-evaluate my life and priorities. Though, I miss him every
day,” said Malmon.
Lizzie
Simon, author of Detour: My Bipolar Road
Trip in 4-D, made into an MTV special, and soon to be an HBO movie,
interviewed Malmon for her new novel about a girl who
loses a brother to suicide. Simon, an alumnus of Columbia University, spoke at
Penn in 2002 for Open Minds during their fall mental health awareness week.
A Suicide
Misunderstood
Malmon has even gotten her mother involved in advocacy with Open Minds, which
has been cathartic for both of them to honor Brian’s memory.
“It’s
been 3 and ˝ years since his death and that’s been long enough for me to adapt
to a new life but I still have 60 years of living with this loss. One thing I
have learned is not to expect anything because you’re world can be turned
upside down in an instant. I try to live each day as it comes,” she said.
After
September 11, Malmon and her family hold faith more
people might hold a deeper understanding of the kind of pain survivors of
suicide as well as deal with their own mental health issues.
“On
September 11, it was a year and a half since Brian died. My mother said to me
that finally people might understand what it was like for us a year ago. No one
can understand suicide especially of a 22-year-old that seemed to be so
promising,” she said.
Coming
Together to Support Each Other
A
few months before Malmon began to formulate Open
Minds on campus, a student committed suicide on campus. Then, the twin towers
were attacked.
“People
started being more concerned about their own mental health in light of those
two events. We has 85 people come to the first coffeehouse,” said Malmon.
Their
first event—an evening coffeehouse where students mingled, listened to music,
and picked up literature from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) on
mental illness. The nominal fee students paid to attend went to the adolescent
unit of a local psychiatric hospital.
Raising Awareness
From
their kick off event, Open Minds began creating flyers to hang around campus
with the names of famous people with diagnosed mental illnesses. Other flyers
were made with the symptoms of different psychiatric disorders such as bipolar
disorder, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, schizophrenia and where
students could go for help.
“Members
of our group sit on the wall on the main campus and students come up to them
asking for help. Sometimes we walk them directly to University Counseling,”
said Malmon. “Most of our membership are students who
have already been diagnosed, are functioning well, and now want to educate
their peers.”
De-Stigmatizing
Mental Illness
Open
Minds even received a $10,000 grant from the university administration to
sponsor activities and guest speakers. With this money, the students were able
to sponsor a two- mile fun run around campus. The students printed T-shirts
with statistics about mental illness and college students on the back of them.
“Over
200 people showed up in the cold of mid-March to run and raise awareness,” said
Malmon. “For months after the event I saw people
wearing the t-shirts at the gym.”
It can
happen to anyone.
According
to the NIMH, one in five Americans suffer with a mental illness.
“Mental
illness can happen to anyone,” said Malmon. “Our goal
is to encourage students to seek help and to try to reiterate that they are not
alone in what they’re going through and they can get better.”
The Road Ahead
A
second chapter of Open Minds began last year at Georgetown University. The
Georgetown chapter added a political dimension to the group by bringing
speakers to campus to talk about support for the Mental Health Parity Act. And,
two more schools have contacted her about starting chapters—Tufts University
and Oregon Institute of Technology. Last spring, Penn held an intercollegiate
conference, which attracted students from up and down the East Coast, on mental
health awareness. This spring, they hope to hold the conference at Georgetown.
And, Malmon hopes the conferences will become an
annual plan to organize and meet other chapters.
To
receive a tool kit to help you start a chapter of Open Minds on your campus,
contact Alison Malmon at Open Minds, 4831 36th
Street, NW #309 Washington, D.C. 20008, (240) 401-3182, amalmon@alumni.upenn.edu,
Active Minds. To visit the
UPENN’s Open Minds web site go to http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~openmind.