Deliberation Group Title: State of Mind
Description: My deliberation group is focused on the current situation regarding mental health on the Penn State campus. We will be looking at the issue from a variety of viewpoints, analyzing three potential solutions that could make for a better mental health atmosphere on campus. Currently, our three approaches include improving CAPS, creating a more accepting campus environment, and promoting general mental health education. To prepare for these approaches we will first visit CAPS and talk to some of the employees there to get a better understanding of what they do. We will then reach out to students who may be willing to speak about their experience there and how they believe it can be improved. We will also analyze successful mental health awareness programs on other college campuses to see how they are working to remove the stigma surrounding mental health. We will assess how these programs could potentially work on our campus. Finally, we will make suggestions for better strategies that can be used to promote general education among the student body and faculty for how to recognize the signs of mental health issues and how to get help.
My Role: For the deliberation project, I am working with Caitlin and Malisa on the team summary and outreach portion of the project. For this portion, we are responsible for creating the issues guide, taking notes during the deliberation, moderating the conclusion, and creating the post-deliberation survey. We are also responsible for inviting various groups in the community who would be able to contribute to the conversation. We have decided on some of the community groups we are going to invite and we have also come up with a layout plan for our issues guide. We are also expected to create a social media campaign for the event, which we have started to do using the website Canva. Following Tuesday’s class, we had created a flyer outlining the date, location, and time of our deliberation that we can print and post on campus or post on social media.
My work: For this portion of the project, I am responsible for contacting UPUA, the LGBTQ groups on campus, the crisis hotline center, and the Mount Nittany Medical Emergency Department. As a group, we are still considering more groups to invite because we feel mental health affects everyone on campus. I am also looking into creating a website or an app to correspond to our deliberation in order to make it more interactive for deliberation participants.
Some questions we as a group still need to address: Overall, I think we still need to narrow our focus a bit. Right now, our approaches are a little broad, but through research the focus can be honed in more. We also need to make sure our language is not inflammatory and it seems as if we are attacking CAPS. We need to learn more about this organization without making assumptions and then provide a balanced argument.