Active Minds at YU

a student-run mental health awareness, education and advocacy organization

Welcome

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Hello, and welcome to Active Minds at YU.  Established in November of 2007, our organization is a branch of the national organization Active Minds, Inc.

Active Minds was founded as Open Minds in the fall of 2001 at the University of Pennsylvania by Alison Malmon after the suicide of her older brother Brian one year earlier.  Brian, also a college student, had been experiencing depression and psychosis for three years but had concealed his symptoms from everyone around him.  In the middle of his senior year, he returned to his family’s home and began receiving treatment for what was later diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder. 

Active Minds on Campus is a program of Active Minds, Inc. that exists as a student-run mental health awareness, education, and advocacy organization on college campuses.  It is the only peer-to-peer organization dedicated to mental health awareness among college students. The organization serves as the young adult voice in mental health advocacy on over eighty college campuses nationwide.  The group is designed to utilize peer outreach to increase students’ awareness of mental health issues and symptoms of mental illness, provide information about available resources, encourage students to seek help as soon as help is needed, and to serve as a liaison between students and the mental health community.  By promoting awareness and education, the group aims to remove the stigma that surrounds mental illness and to create an open environment for discussion of mental health issues.

Every chapter of Active Minds on Campus chooses to focus on at least one specific aspect of mental illness. Here at YU, because our undergraduate campuses are so small, and thus many people “talk,” we have chosen to work toward removing the stigma associated with seeking professional help for a mental illness.

If you are on facebook, please show us your support by joining our facebook group called “Active Minds Yeshiva University.”

Please be sure to browse the very helpful links on the left side of the page.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to email us at activeminds@yu.edu.