Stony Brook University students, faculty and staff gathered at the SAC Plaza on Sept. 29 for the fourth annual Walk of Hope, hosted by the Center for Prevention and Outreach to raise mental health awareness during National Suicide Prevention Month.
The Center for Prevention and Outreach launched two programs named “Let’s Talk” and “Resilience, Empowerment, Access, Care and Healing Groups” for SBU students to connect with counselors and peers concerning their mental health and emotional needs.
As students looped around in assembly lines, they placed pamphlets providing guidance, a cloth towel, toiletries, cosmetic kits, deodorant, tissues, writing utensils and a blue bouncy ball into bright blue bags.
Stony Brook’s Center for Prevention and Outreach (CPO) was one of the 20 schools in the nation to secure the 2018 Garrett Lee Smith Campus Suicide Prevention Grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
So why does Stony Brook, a university with 3,117 students from China, South Korea and Taiwan alone, have zero mental health counselors on site that speak Mandarin or Korean?
The new Violence Intervention and Prevention Committee, a brainchild of Christine Szaraz and the Center for Prevention and Outreach, aims to gather disparate student efforts under one banner.
