YPSILANTI, MI – Ron Flowers wants everyone to feel comfortable talking about mental health struggles, even when it’s hard. He knows from experience how vital it can be.
The Eastern Michigan University professor lost his son Dan, who struggled with mental illness. On the outside, Dan thrived as a National Merit Scholar, an accomplished wrestler and performer in jazz bands. On the inside, Dan dealt with anxiety, panic attacks and alcohol abuse.
“It made me ask what could we have done,” Flowers said.
Flowers wants the topic of mental health out in the open, and is working with university leaders and faculty to create classrooms with compassion.
As head of the university’s Department of Leadership and Counseling, Flowers secured a $50,000 grant from the Flinn Foundation, which aims to improve the “quality, scope and delivery of mental health services in Michigan,” according to the foundation’s website.
The grant will help with the campus-wide task force “Building a Community of Caring” that Flowers and others established in fall 2023. Working with the Jed Foundation and University of Michigan’s Healthy Minds Study, the university will spend the next four years studying best practices for mental health support, awareness and education and implement them across campus, Flowers said.
Flowers became motivated to push for this initiative after spending times in support groups of parents that have lost children to mental illness. He asked the university’s Provost’s Office if more could be done for mental health awareness and support on the Ypsilanti campus.
“Can we strengthen the safety net for our students as they make their way through this university?” Flowers remembers asking. “Can we form a task force to examine these questions?”
More information on the university’s Counseling and Psychological Services can be found at emich.edu/caps/index.php.
The university is matching the grant funds to supplement the mental health support initiative, Flowers said. Both the Flinn and Jed foundations were formed through their founders’ personal experiences dealing or supporting those suffering from mental illness, so Flowers said they are perfect partners.
“Through those partnerships, we will map what we are doing to support our students at EMU,” Flowers said. “Once we know what our needs are, how can we strengthen what we are doing, inform students what we are doing, work with organizations to work on what we’re doing and support families?’
Flowers teaches classes studying higher education issues and has found that students with mental health issues typically do not finish their degrees. The focus has to be on making the classroom a safer place to discuss mental health, he said.
“You have to talk about it,” he said, adding he has found the faculty is “student-centered” and ready to offer support. “Make it a normal thing to talk about it classes.”
Some tips he has found helpful is getting people to disconnect from social media for a day, meaning putting down their cellphones.
“Take a day and set your phone aside to disconnect,” he said.
The early part of the “Building a Community that Cares” initiative is finding strategies to reach students. This involves making the university’s mental health services website accessible, implementing input from the whole university community and hanging banners across campus that read “You Belong” or “We Care.”
The initiative is also exploring how to make faculty comfortable discussing with students. The last thing Flowers wants is another thing for teachers to check off an already busy checklist, he said.
“We don’t want to just add another thing to people’s schedules, so how can we do it in a way that’s convenient,” he said, adding that the solution may be short YouTube videos of faculty sharing best practices. “What works for them, what doesn’t work for someone else, messages like that.”
The early feedback on this initiative has encouraged Flowers, as faculty has “overwhelmed” him with messages and ideas.
“I now have an idea folder that I’m filling up,” he said. “We are doing great stuff on campus already, and I look forward to adding to it.”
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