Raleigh, North Carolina — From multiple student suicides to school shootings to remote learning during a global pandemic, the typical college experience for North Carolina students is anything but normal. did.
Add in the usual stressors of homework, extracurricular activities, and being away from home, and it’s easy to see why so many students say they’re struggling with their mental health.
“We’ve seen time and time again that mental health is an issue for our community,” Emmy Martin said.
Martin is a junior at UNC. She currently serves as editor-in-chief of The Daily Tar Heel.
Last year, Martin won a $10,000 grant through the Solutions Journalism Network. Her idea was to create a joint publication between multiple universities focused on mental health coverage.
“We ended up with nine newsrooms,” Martin said. “Many of them are actually private institutions, which was a little different than my original intention of just serving people within the UNC system.”
The junior said he was happy with the final result, saying he thought it “added a really interesting perspective.”
Martin continued: “If you compare Duke’s resources to A&T’s, things will look different. I think it adds a lot of nuance to our project, which is great.”
NC State’s Technician is one of nine associated publications.
The newsroom, led by co-editors Jameson Wolfe and Ethan Bakogiannis, was eager to contribute to this effort when Martin reached out.
“We immediately thought, yeah, this is something we want to be a part of,” Wolf said.
Wolf explained that she and Bakogiannis are already having their own discussions about how to better cover mental health topics after a difficult 2022-2023 school year.
“Last school year was really tough here on campus,” Wolf said. “We were seeing a significant spike in student suicide deaths, and everyone on campus was looking for ways to get through this.”
When talking about his experience covering mental health as a student journalist, Wolf recalled, “In my first week as editor-in-chief, I covered two student deaths on campus within 24 hours.”
Students from all nine universities met in Charlotte before the start of this academic year to make plans.
More than six months later, The Mental Health Collaborative is officially released. This special issue is entirely devoted to mental health-related topics and is available online and in print.
Martin explained that putting these resources together has a dual purpose: it allows student journalists to heal by talking to other students, while also connecting people to available resources.
“The people who work at the Daily Tar Heel, the Duke Chronicle, the Technician and the Niner Times are friends with many of the people in the communities they cover,” Mullin said. “I think it’s a very interesting place to be when something tragic happens.”
Wolfe agreed that the experience was helpful, saying, “It also helped me to be able to say, ‘Oh, this is a resource on campus that I should take advantage of and be involved in.’ ” he added. There are things you can do to support yourself. ”
Both students said they hope to continue their cooperative relationship in the future.
Martin said he specifically hopes to draw the attention of campus administrators across the state to emphasize the importance of investing in mental health resources for students, faculty and staff.
“This collaboration on mental health is just the foundation. We’re just starting to have the conversation in a different way than we’ve been talking about before,” Marin said. “There are so many more stories that people can tell.”
